Researchers have developed methods to study and manipulate areas of the brain, though many of those methods are restricted by the limited depth that light can reach within the brain. A multidisciplinary team at Washington University in St. Louis plans to overcome that limitation by integrating ultrasound with genetics to precisely modify neurons in the brain.
Hong Chen, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering and of neurosurgery at the School of Medicine, will lead the team in the research with a five-year $3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The new method, Sonogenetics 2.0, has the potential to combine the advantage of ultrasound and genetic engineering to modulate defined neurons noninvasively and precisely in the brains of humans and animals. Read the article in its entirety here.