A Conversation with Edward Boyden.

Abstract

Dr. Boyden: If we want to understand the brain, we have three technological needs: to see what’s going on in the brain with high-speed precision, to map the molecules and the organization of the brain, and to control the high-speed dynamics.We’ve been working a lot on extending tool sets into these three directions. For control, we’ve been trying to perfect optogenetic control of neurons and also to develop noninvasiveways to focus the effects of electricity deep in the brain. Formapping the brain, we’ve beenworking onways to physically blow up the brain until it’s up to a thousand times bigger in volume so that you can map the very finest connections.