His synthetic neurobiology group has worked out a way to fire individual brain neurons by imprinting algae proteins on them.

Keeping active switches on a process that prunes inactive connections between brain neurons.

As well as being made by brain neurons, they are made elsewhere in the body.

Scientists scanned the brains of 12 sleep-deprived people and found how tiredness interfered with the brain neurons' ability to encode information and translate what was seen into conscious thought.

For example, altered levels of a normal protein due to environmental factors could then change the structure or functioning of specific brain neurons during development.