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  4. Naturalistic spatiotemporal modulation of epiretinal stimulation increases the response persistence of retinal ganglion cell
 
research article

Naturalistic spatiotemporal modulation of epiretinal stimulation increases the response persistence of retinal ganglion cell

Chenais, Naïg Aurélia Lüdmilla
•
Airaghi Leccardi, Marta Jole Ildelfonsa
•
Ghezzi, Diego  
2021
Journal of Neural Engineering

Objective. Retinal stimulation in blind patients evokes the sensation of discrete points of light called phosphenes, which allows them to perform visually guided tasks, such as orientation, navigation, object recognition, object manipulation and reading. However, the clinical benefit of artificial vision in profoundly blind patients is still tenuous, as several engineering and biophysical obstacles keep it far away from natural perception. The relative preservation of the inner retinal neurons in hereditary degenerative retinal diseases, such as retinitis pigmentosa, supports artificial vision through the network-mediated stimulation of retinal ganglion cells. However, the response of retinal ganglion cells to repeated electrical stimulation rapidly declines, primarily because of the intrinsic desensitisation of their excitatory network. In patients, upon repetitive stimulation, phosphenes fade out in less than half of a second, which drastically limits the understanding of the percept. Approach. A more naturalistic stimulation strategy, based on spatiotemporal modulation of electric pulses, could overcome the desensitisation of retinal ganglion cells. To investigate this hypothesis, we performed network-mediated epiretinal stimulations paired to electrophysiological recordings in retinas explanted from both male and female retinal degeneration 10 mice. Main results. The results showed that the spatial and temporal modulation of the network-mediated epiretinal stimulation prolonged the persistence of the retinal ganglion cell's response from 400 ms up to 4.2 s. Significance. A time-varied, non-stationary and interrupted stimulation of the retinal network, mimicking involuntary microsaccades, might reduce the fading of the visual percept and improve the clinical efficacy of retinal implants.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1088/1741-2552/abcd6f
Author(s)
Chenais, Naïg Aurélia Lüdmilla
Airaghi Leccardi, Marta Jole Ildelfonsa
Ghezzi, Diego  
Date Issued

2021

Published in
Journal of Neural Engineering
Volume

18

Issue

1

Article Number

016016

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LNE  
Available on Infoscience
November 30, 2020
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/173733
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