Scientists at Harvard University have used light and genetic trickery to trace out neurons' ability to excite or inhibit one another, literally shedding new light on the question of how neurons interact with one another in live animals.
The work is described in the current issue of the journal Nature Methods. It builds upon scientists' understanding of the neural circuitry of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, frequently used as a model in biological research. While the detailed physical structure of C. elegans' scant 302 neurons is well documented, the new research helps measure how neurons in this organism affect each others' activity, and could ultimately help researchers map out in detail how neural impulses flow throughout the organism.
"This approach gives us a powerful new tool for analyzing small neural circuits, and directly measuring how neurons talk to each other," says Sharad Ramanathan, an assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology and of applied physics at Harvard. "While we've only mapped out the interplay of four neurons, it's the first time scientists have determined the ability of multiple neurons in a circuit to excite or inhibit their neighbors."
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