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Since infrared neuromodulation has been shown to be able to directly modulate neurons without genetic modifications, what is the advantage of optogenetics?

The question sounds adversarial, but it's really just due to my lack of knowledge in this area haha

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I’m not too familiar with infrared neuromodulation, but it isn’t a widely used technique in systems neuroscience. My guess is it would be hard to target individual neurons, let alone target a genetically defined population of cells. Heating is usually what causes damage from light stimulation, so we try to minimize heating as much as possible—the brain very tightly controls temperature

Interesting! Thanks for the reply! Is the laser intensity much lower with optogenetics compared to infrared neuromodulation?

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