The
technique used in the study — optical
stimulation of brain
cells, or «optogenetics» — involves the insertion of a gene into parts of a brain to make them sensitive to blue light and then stimulating them with the light.
These range from visual
stimulation experiments that allow us to tap into the specific sets of retinal ganglion
cells that are most vulnerable early in the disease, to the evolution of new imaging
techniques, largely thanks to Alf Dubra and Vivek Srinivasan's work in those areas, and the ability to image retinal ganglion
cells and their component parts like their axons which degenerate very early in glaucoma.