Neurons, the cells of the nervous system, communicate by transmitting chemical signals to each other through junctions called synapses. This synaptic transmission is critical for the brain and the spinal cord to quickly process the huge amount of incoming stimuli and generate outgoing signals. However, studying synaptic transmission in living animals is very difficult, and researchers have to use artificial conditions that don’t capture the … Continue reading Optogenetics used to capture neuronal transmission in the live mammalian brain.