Engineering the Brain.

The author describes his efforts to invent tools to help solve the old problems of the normal and pathological brain. He reveals that he had launched a new research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab to develop technologies for controlling neuronal activity. He adds that he was able, along with his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics and Stanford University, to cause specific neurons to fire spikes precisely in response to brief pulses of blue light, by expressing in the neurons a unique membrane protein from green algae.