It could be in the future but its not yet. Optogenetics has just merely been one more albeit powerful tool in the neuroscience toolkit and have generally not been impressed with how useful (or not) it has been..
replyI 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.
replyYou have to imagine, before opto, EVERYTHING in neuroscience was observational, except for the only real circuit intervention we had - ablation of an entire region without any specificity, especially with regards to passing axons.
Now, I literally expect any near paper that even touches behavior 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.