Science in the 21st Century

When I first started studying neuroscience I found a scientific paper that inspired and motivated me.
The paper demonstrated how advances in science and technology enable further advances.

Advances in any area of science can potentially help any other area of science. Under the right conditions, science and technology can accelerate its own development. For example NASA's research on optical lenses for telescopes has helped improve our microscopes, which has indirectly helped all of science. Neuroscience in particular has been greatly aided by advances in chemistry, genetics, computers, and by the ever improving accuracy and resolution of our tools.

When I first started studying neuroscience in earnest I was surprised by the state-of-the-art methods. Scientists are studying the brain in unprecedented detail and collecting massive amounts of highly accurate data. Computers have become a necessity for sifting through these massive datasets. And at times it seems as though we've traded listlessly hypothesizing without the data needed to confirm or reject, for furiously measuring without a theory with which to understand the data.

Early on I found a scientific article using GCaMP calcium imaging. The article's scientific discoveries didn't seem important, but I was captivated by the methods they used to collect their data. The technique was roughly as follows:

  1. Isolate the DNA sequence which encodes the jellyfish's the green fluorescent protein (GFP).
    This work was done in 1990's.
  2. Combine the GFP with with a calcium-sensitive protein to obtain the calcium indicator "GCaMP".
    GCaMP only fluoresces in the presence of calcium-ions. This step was done in the early 2000's.
  3. Genetically modify a mouse embryo to express the GCaMP protein.
  4. Surgically install a very small video camera and light source on the inside of the mouse's skull.
  5. Observe the concentrations of calcium-ions, which are an important signalling molecule in the brain.

The mouse is alive and awake as we are observing its brain activity. Here is an example of what this looks like in action. The box in the lower-right corner of the video shows what's going on inside of the mouse's brain. The white dots that keep appearing and fading away are neurons with an increased calcium-ion concentration.

GCaMP imaging represents the confluence of decades of research and development across numerous fields of science and technology. We've genetically modified a mouse such that we can simply "read out" data directly from its brain. This method would have been difficult to imagine 30 years ago. But now, with tools like this will we finally be able to understand the mysteries of the brain?

PS. I think that this was the paper I originally found describing their GCaMP experiments:

Cerebellar granule cells encode the expectation of reward
Mark J. Wagner, Tony Hyun Kim, Joan Savall, Mark J. Schnitzer & Liqun Luo (March 2017)
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21726