Recent advancement in nanosensors for neurotransmitters detection: Present and future perspective

Neurotransmitters maintain physiological condition and behaviour of the brain and body. Studies on transmitting mechanisms and change in concentration of particular neurotransmitters provide knowledge about how these substances enhance our ability to interpret complex neural pathophysiology and thus advancing us towards developing new therapeutic and diagnostic intervention. Since the role of neurotransmitters in the cognitive processes are much complex, therefore their detection-based analysis leads to expand our understanding on their functions and early disease detection. One of the most crucial aspects of neuroscience is developing profound understanding of neurotransmitter release kinetics. As compared to other techniques, employing nanobiosensors for studying neurotransmission and dynamic changes in neurons exhibit relatively fast, accurate and significant results where other techniques generally fail. Using advanced techniques, high sensitivity and specificity also furnish precise information of neurotransmitter transport at the cellular level. Over the past few years, the advanced nanomaterials in combination of various biomolecules and distinct polymers are widely used in development of biosensing platforms for in-vivo and in-vitro point of care neurotransmitters detection. The review article is focused upon summarizing present status of nanobiosensors based neurotransmitter detection for clinical samples. This firstly describes the importance of neurotransmitters, conventional methods for neurotransmitters detection; need of developing advanced sensing methods and importance of nanomaterials to develop these sensing platforms. Secondly, current status of developed electrochemical and optical nanosensors for different neurotransmitters detection is elaborated in detail. The reported work extensively explains the importance of nano based sensing platforms for understating of neurotransmitters detection. Last section of the review summarized the future perspectives of nanosensors in clinical set-up for neurotransmitter detection.