Comment by cajal

I think its hard to measure the impact directly, but I'd say it has an enormous indirect effect on neuroscience that is bigger than anything yet I think.

You have to imagine, before opto, EVERYTHING in neuroscience was either genetic or observational, nothing really good with manipulating circuit function directly except for the only real intervention we had - ablation of an entire region without any specificity, especially with regards to passing axons.

Now, I literally expect any neuro paper that even touches behavior or circuits to have some sort of validation with opto, or it's harder for me to believe.

Maybe there's a bit of an over reliance on it in my above comment, but if you have a better causal tool to suggest, be my guest.