An unprecedented look at dopamine in the brain reveals that psychosis drugs get developed with the wrong neurons in mind.
This is great. I hope we start to see more drugs developed more like this technique:
With a combination of tiny lenses, microscopes, cameras, and fluorescent molecules, Parker’s lab can observe thousands of individual neurons in mice, in real time, as they experience different antipsychotic drugs.
And begin to wean off some of this:
The first step in his experiment was to mimic excess dopamine in mice by giving them amphetamines. “You inject them with amphetamine, and they run more. If you inject them with antipsychotics first, they run less. That’s the state of the art,” Parker says.
We already develop drugs and perform a lot of research with the first techniques, example device here: https://open-ephys.org/miniscope-v4/miniscope-v4
It looks quite grotesque when mounted on the mice mind you. The “flourescent molecules” are by far the coolest, just google GFP (green flourescent proteins) and optogenetics - basically force specific behaviours or genetic expression in a mouse by shining light in the area you injected the optogenetic anitbodies.
Edit: GORE/NSFW warning Heres a better photo of a mounted miniscope: https://francis.naukas.com/files/2019/02/Dibujo20190203-Open-source-UCLA-Miniscope-nature-methods-41592_2018_266_Fig1-768x449.png
