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New technology detects firing of nerve cells
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Technology that can detect when nerve cells fire, which can be used to observe nerve activity in the eye as well as other light-accessible parts of the body, has been created by researchers at Stanford University, according to a press release from the National Eye Institute.
The noninvasive technology detects changes in shape in the nerve cells by interferometric imaging that senses alterations in the light passing through the cell or being reflected from its surface, the release said.
The interferometric microscope developed by the Stanford researchers collects 50,000 frames per second.
“This nanometer-scale shape change is very difficult to see, but with ultrafast quantitative phase imaging, it actually turns out to be visible,” Daniel Palanker, PhD, professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and director of the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory at Stanford University, said in the release.
The project, part of a collaboration funded through the NEI Audacious Goals Initiative for Regenerative Medicine, aims to use the technology to detect signals passing through the optic nerve to help design and test new therapies to restore visual function, the release said.
“Our task in this joint grant was establishment of the basic facts — how fast and how much the cells move during action potential — and to devise the best technical strategies for the system to be then used in humans,” Palanker said.