Optocapacitance in Scientific American

My latest Scientific American article “Optocapacitance Shines New Light on the Brain” explores an exciting new technology, tentatively named optocapacitance. While I’ve been excited about its better-known cousin, optogenetics, for years, I think this has greater potential for therapeutic application and augmentation uses in living human beings. Treatment of macular degeneration and certain other retinal diseases has been one suggested application. It could also offer an effective method for integrating robotic and neural prosthetics with our bodies. Direct connections between various devices and our nervous system could become possible, providing improved sensory feedback and control. As far as affective computing goes, I could see it one day leading to direct communication with our emotions for diagnostic, therapeutic and entertainment purposes.