Les Sinclair speaks with lead researcher J. Julius Zhu, PhD, of UVA’s Department of Pharmacology, and how their new method offers a better understanding of depression, sleep disorders, autism, neurological diseases, and major psychiatric conditions. It will speed scientific research into the workings of the brain, they say, and facilitate the development of new treatments. Scientists at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. The new method developed by Zhu and his collaborators lets scientists examine transmissions inside the brain at both the microscopic level and the far, far smaller nanoscopic level. It combines a biological “sensor” with two different forms of cutting-edge imaging.

Nanoscopic Visualization of Restricted Nonvolume Cholinergic and Monoaminergic Transmission with Genetically Encoded Sensors | Nano Letters (acs.org)

Genetically encoded sensors enable micro- and nano-scopic decoding of transmission in healthy and diseased brains | Molecular Psychiatry (nature.com)