Optogenetic approaches addressing extracellular modulation of neural excitability

The extracellular ionic environment in neural tissue has the capacity to influence and be influenced by, natural bouts of neural activity. We employed optogenetic approaches to control and investigate these interactions within and between cells and across spatial scales. We began by developing a temporally precise means to study microdomain-scale interactions between extracellular protons and acid-sensing ion channels (ASICs). By coupling...