What would a molecular brain interface add to ultrasound? · Grey Matter

Ultrasound sees blood flow, a slow and blurred echo of what neurons do.

What would a molecular brain interface add to ultrasound?

Ultrasound sees blood flow, a slow and blurred echo of what neurons do. Optogenetics found a way around a similar limit for light: give chosen neurons a gene for a protein that responds to it, and light can switch them on or off with cell-type precision. The ultrasound version would give neurons proteins that echo sound or respond to it; Mikhail Shapiro, a co-founder of Merge Labs, showed in 2014 that tiny gas-filled protein shells made by microbes return an ultrasound signal. Merge Labs has said it combines such molecular approaches with ultrasound, without publishing which molecules or how they would reach a human brain.