Corinne Orlemann, Matthieu Provansal & Maureen van der Grinten

NIN speakers:

• Corinne Orlemann, PhD
• Matthieu Provansal, Postdoc
• Maureen van der Grinten, PhD

From the Vision & Cognition group

Overcoming challenges in cortical prosthetics for vision restoration in mice, NHP and humans.

Abstract

Brain machine interfaces represent a promising technology to restore sight in blind individuals. These devices rely on an encoder that translates relevant features of the visual scene into electrical stimulation pulses. These pulses run through penetrating electrodes implanted in the brain and then activate the surrounding neurons, leading to the perception of artificial dots of light or phosphenes. Cortical prosthetics have been demonstrated to elicit complex shape perception in both non-human primates and human patients.

Yet, some challenges still need to be overcome. First, the material, design and implantation strategyof intracortical probes must provide good biocompatibility with the surrounding tissue. Second, many parameters can shape the electrical stimulation and therefore impact the neuronal activation spread and corresponding visual percept. We therefore need to understand how these parameters control the activated neuronal population to optimize the quality of the perceived image. Finally, repetitive stimulation of the same electrode can lead to neuronal adaptation and fading of the phosphene. This effect must be properly quantified to understand its implications for phosphene perception and to allow for stimulation strategies that produce robust and stable percepts during continuous prosthetic vision.

This symposium will address these points in three different studies that we conducted in mice, nonhuman primates and human volunteers. This work has important implications for the improvement of next-generation visual prosthetics.