Sculpted Light in the Brain

The Kavli Foundation announces three new Kavli Exploration Awards, as an outcome of collaborative research proposals that emerged from the international conference, Sculpted Light in the Brain. These grants will support three collaborative projects to develop new methods that rely on photonic technologies to advance neuroscience.

Founded in 2017, the Sculpted Light in the Brain conference is held every two years to convene neuroscientists, computer scientists, optics researchers, and others who develop technologies that, or use light as a tool to, probe the activity of cells and circuits. Largely driven by early-career researchers, when this diverse group from complementary fields assembles, it is a prime opportunity to brainstorm and form new collaborations.

This year’s conference was held in June in Paris, France, and attendees were invited to submit proposals to seed new research ideas for Kavli Exploration Awards. Three projects were chosen to comprise the 2024 cohort of awardees, who were selected through a competitive review of outstanding projects and represent a broad range of scientific areas and technological approaches.

An all-optical nanophotonic neural interface

Currently there exists no chip-scale photonic platform that can perform optogenetic excitation and optical readout from neuronal networks. Aseema Mohanty, assistant professor at Tufts University, and Clara Zaccaria, postdoctoral research at the University of Trento, will design and implement the first a nanophotonic neural interface capable of both tasks for in vivo and in vitro optogenetic studies.

Brain-wide cortical circuits for sensory-guided behavior

Gregory Handy, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota; Anne Takesian, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School; and Ross Williamson, assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, will investigate how sound is encoded locally by distinct neural populations and how these signals are routed brain-wide to inform perception. Traditionally, cortical circuits have been studied in specific brain regions considered in isolation from the rest of the brain. By combining holographic optogenetics, animal behavior, and computational modeling, these researchers will apply a novel approach to gain a systems-level understanding of cortical processing.

Mimicking natural brain function with optogenetics

Understanding how neuronal activity generates cognition and behavior is a central goal of neuroscience and optogenetics is a widely used tool for optical perturbation of neural circuits. Aleena Garner, assistant professor at Harvard University, and Brent Doiron, professor at the University of Chicago, seek to understand the differences and similarities between naturally evoked and synthetically, optically driven activity of neuronal population responses. In their collaboration, they will combine optogenetics, calcium imaging, virtual reality and statistical theory to generate a framework for understanding how population activity supports neuronal representation.

“We are delighted to support the work of these outstanding scientists who are pushing the limits of imaging technologies to study the brain,” said Amy Bernard, director of life sciences at The Kavli Foundation. “Their work will generate new insights into fundamental neuroscience, and may lead to applications that have yet to be discovered.”

Learn more about other neuroscience projects funded by The Kavli Foundation through the Observe and Measure the Mind program here.