Scientists remotely controlled the social behavior of mice with light | Hacker News Reader

Scientists remotely controlled the social behavior of mice with light

sciencenews.org

27 pointslnyan13 comments

> "using tailored viruses to genetically modify cells so they respond to illumination"

>"These head-mounted and back-mounted devices are battery-free, wirelessly powered by the same high-frequency radio waves"

>"The widely available wireless technology used in this work, the same now used in contactless payment with credit cards, could allow broad adoption"

>"such research, he says, may in turn “inform better diagnostics and therapeutics in humans.”"

The conspiracy theorists are going to run with this one

It's like they went out of their way to refer to the illuminati without explicitly mentioning them.

It's ironic that the Illuminati always get associated with stuff like this, given that they were an organisation devoted to free thought, freedom from superstition, and opposing the abuse of power.

I'm not sure if RA Wilson would be laughing at this or horrified at what he's done.

Magnetogenetics seems to be the new trend for remote control of neural pathways. And it indeed sounds scary to me that someone can now engineer a pathogen that will modify your brain cells with living antenae in order to allow remote control of emotions, behavior and god knows what else. We can only hope that it doesn't get abused by bad people....

- https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.4265

- https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b02266

Will we be needing Snowcrash Namshrubs soon?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash

“The new devices rely on optogenetics, a technique in which researchers use bursts of light to activate or suppress the brain nerve cells, or neurons, often using tailored viruses to genetically modify cells so they respond to illumination (SN: 1/15/10).“ That seems like a really important piece of information: they controlled genetically modified mice with light, not just any old mice.

Additionally, all the lay press write-ups hype the entrained synchrony as being what makes the mice get along better. But what they fail to emphasize is that the part of the brain they are optogenetically stimulating is the final part of the reward pathway associated with incentive salience.

The shared relative (re: each mouse) frequency they stimulate that part of the reward pathway with is much less important than it being part of the reward pathway.

I feel like the interesting part of the synchrony is that the mice will cooperate with the other mice that they are in sync with. How does that happen?

> "the rodents groomed and sniffed companions with whom their neurons were in sync more often than ones with whom they were out of sync"

If some sets of the rodents is not as the same frequency as the another set then it's likely that only one of the frequencies of stimulation of the reward pathway were optimal for recruiting the relevant population of neurons for reward expression. They'd feel all nice and not afraid of each other, with an increased incentive salience (including social stimuli). Whereas the group not being stimulated at the optimal frequency for recruitment wouldn't feel nice and be motivated to persue stimuli.

Seems plausible

And here I am sitting in front of a light-projector.

Coming to psychiatric hospitals, prisons, and schools near you...

They might test it on prisoners first, but brain modification would likely be utilized by the wealthy.

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