To experimentally reduce anxiety in mice, Stanford scientists led by Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and researcher, have used optogenetics to flash light on a specific neural pathway in the amygdala, a brain region involved in processing emotions.

Dr. Amit Etkin, a Stanford psychiatrist and researcher, is trying to translate their findings about anxiety in rodents to improve human therapy, using transcranial magnetic stimulation, a technique far less specific than optogenetics but with the advantage of being noninvasive.

Dr. Krishna V. Shenoy, a neuroscience researcher who is part of an international effort financed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, says optogenetics has promise for new devices that could eventually help treat traumatic brain injury and equip wounded veterans with neural prostheses. “By feeding information from sensors on the prosthetic fingertips directly back into the brain using optogenetics, one could in principle provide a high-fidelity artificial sense of touch.”