If only optogenetics for chronic pain were possible now, I would love to receive the benefits of pain neurons being turned off with just a light. A Harvard article discusses how researchers inhibit the perception of pain in genetically modified mice. Next level, humans, ooh that could be scary or not. My science fiction mind always leads me to the more skeptical paranoid path. Anyway, the article suggests that possibly they could inject humans with a virus packaged with the genetic material to create the "light responsive proteins called opsins" and then these opsins "could selectively turn neuronal activity on or off with a flash of light" which means in my hands I could have a flashlight, Dr. Who-ish tool, that would shut the pain machine down.
Attempting to improve my magical thinking abilities I guess. It's nice to hope. Since I'm in the hopeful mood, I'm crafting Rune art on beer coasters. I've had a bit of a fascination with them since the 1990s and now I've combined them with QRcode generation. Comments are closed.
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Blog AuthorTiff Graham (TiGra) experimenting with ideas Archives
December 2023
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