Maria Kasper

Project summary

Mental disorders and optogenetics

The long-term aim of this research is to determine how the brain performs certain fundamental cognitive processes that are essential for an individual to live a meaningful life. Cognition refers to the mental processes that enable us to focus, think, remember and understand. Many mental disorders, including schizophrenia and autism, are characterised by altered cognition. Despite extensive research, there are currently no effective medications for these conditions, largely because we do not understand how the brain performs mental processes or how changes in the brain can lead to altered cognition and mental disorders.

 

Research on the brain has been limited by technical challenges, which have contributed to a serious delay in the development of effective psychiatric medications. This has also contributed to the continued stigmatisation of people affected by mental disorders. The new technology of optogenetics now allows us, for the first time, to use light to directly manipulate networks of neurons in the brain. By delivering light through an optical fibre, we can activate or inhibit selected neurons in mice and rats while they perform cognitive tasks. In this way, we can identify which cells and neural networks are directly involved in cognitive processes and examine how altered cognition affects the animals’ behaviour.

 

If we can demonstrate how the brain normally performs mental processes, we can also begin to understand what goes wrong in mental disorders. Optogenetics is currently at the forefront of advances in brain research, and our understanding of the brain has never progressed so rapidly.