Boulder Nonlinear Systems’ High-Speed 1536 × 1536 SLM Highlighted in New Article in the Journal Science
LAFAYETTE, Colorado | July 18, 2019
Boulder Nonlinear Systems (BNS) joins a team of researchers from the Deisseroth Lab at Stanford University and the University of Tokyo in publishing a new article in the journal Science today. In it, the team details the use of the BNS 1536 × 1536 spatial light modulator (SLM) for holographic optogenetic photostimulation.
Specifically, the team at Stanford multiplexes two SLMs to simultaneously photostimulate large groups of neurons in awake behaving mice, over 1 mm2 areas and multiple cortical layers with kHz temporal precision. The team used this technique to study the visual response in trained mice. Using this unprecedented level of optical control, the researchers found they could even seemingly implant false visual perceptions directly into the mouse’s brain by mimicking natural neuron firing patterns in the visual cortex.
This groundbreaking work is the culmination of a multi-year collaboration between the Deisseroth lab and Boulder Nonlinear Systems to develop the high-speed 1536 × 1536 SLM. This SLM was specifically developed to meet the growing needs of the neuroscience community for a high-speed, high-resolution phase modulator capable of handling high laser powers. The SLM boasts speeds up to 600 phase masks per second while maintaining 90% of steady-state diffraction efficiency and the ability to store over 2,000 arbitrary phase masks on-board, which can be accessed in any order, to reduce data transfer latency during experiments.
The original article can be found on the journal’s webpage here.
Further coverage of this work can be found in the New York Times, Scientific American, and The Scientist.
Further information on the SLM used this study can be found here or by contacting us directly.