Rafael Yuste
Professor of Biological Sciences and Director of the Center for NeuroTechnology at Columbia University (New York), President of the NeuroRights Foundation and promoter of the BRAIN project
The articles demonstrate one of the technological approaches promoted by the BRAIN initiative: the use of high-density electrodes to record the activity of neural circuits. The original slogan of the BRAIN initiative was “to record all the activity of all neurons,” something that has already been achieved in smaller animals such as hydra and zebrafish larvae using optical methods, which are the other major focus of neurotechnology today. These articles, in fact, lag behind optical advances, as two years ago it was possible to optically map the activity of more than a million neurons in a mouse. In any case, these articles represent an important advance in the application to animals of a technology that is beginning to be used in patients. It is also noteworthy that this work has been carried out by a large consortium of laboratories, demonstrating that modern neuroscience and, in general, all biology, is becoming increasingly similar to physics, where large experiments are carried out in groups.