To summarise this relevant blog post, I estimated effective stimulation depth of the most popular in vivo optogenetics LED’s against a range of commonly-used opsins:
Testing opto systems
1. Plexbright LED’s on commutator
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Decent power from blue LED (7.5 mW) | Non-blue LED’s are not bright enough |
| Optic fibres are very “soft”, which limits behavioural impact to animal | Commutators are heavy, which drags on the mice, and the fibres are very fragile |
| Comes as “complete” system for basic opto stims | The optogenetic controller doesn’t have easy TTL input, so is difficult to use with anything other than Plexon’s software |
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Good power from blue LED (10 mW) | Non-blue LED’s are not bright enough |
| Rotary optical connections spin very easily | Optic fibres are very stiff which impact the animal |
| LED accepts easy TTL input |