Hi Nikolas,

You could try viral infection and optogenetics, similarly like in this paper: Article Dendrite-Specific Amplification of Weak Synaptic Input durin...

Cheers,

Attila

So I've done simultaneous uncaging and dendritic recording and there was no detriment to the dendrite health. We did uncaging solely because you cant reliably evoke quantal release from terminals. People have published that you can, with very fine stimulating electrodes, and perhaps it is possible in certain preparations. But if you want to know what happens in one spine in response to a quanta, uncaging is still a pretty good way to go. Optogenetics has the same issue: once you excite that axon, you don't know what else is going to happen.

I have done single spine stimulation using glutamate uncaging to evoke LTP. It works very well. As long as you don't hit the dendrite with very high laser power, I don't see a reason why you would hard the dendrite.