Unveiling the potential of pattern-stimulation in visual prostheses for activities of daily living

Visual prostheses (VP) address vision loss by electrically stimulating neuronal activity within the visual pathway, effectively bypassing the damaged site and providing individuals with phosphene perception. An ideal VP should capture images in real-time and stimulate visual pathways based on the image content, creating precepts that accurately represent the visual scene in front of the user, using phosphenes as building blocks. At present, however, the perception provided by the VP is rudimentary and markedly distinct from natural vision. Here, we evaluated whether pattern stimulation through the occipital intracortical electrode array can convey meaningful perceptual information about the surroundings that can be useful in everyday tasks.We implanted an intracortical microelectrode array consisting of 96 electrodes in the visual cortex of 2 visually impaired volunteers for 6 months. We tested their performance in Activities of Daily Living tasks, including a table-top search paradigm, hand-eye coordination, sock sorting, and real-life problems. In different tasks, we assigned a specific stimulation pattern to a particular stimulus. Participants were subjected to stimulation when their gaze was fixed on the target object; a moment captured by the AI-based object recognition software. Throughout the experiments, participants relied exclusively on perceptual information derived from electrical stimulation. Here, we present the time and accuracy of performing these tasks. We found that participants were able to perform tasks using the prosthesis they were unable to perform without it. Our findings underscore the potential utility of integrating pattern-object associations and employing advanced object-detection software in the initial phases of VP development.​