Topic: phosphene perception

For the long term aim to develop a visual cortical prosthesis, optogenetic stimulation of primary visual cortex (V1) provides a more specific alternative to electrical stimulation. However, adoption of optogenetic techniques from rodents to macaques as an intermediate step towards humans has proven to be challenging. Here we present prelimnary results, directly comparing effects obtained from optogenetic vs electrical stimulation of macaque V1.We injected AAV9-CamKIIa-ChrimsonR-mScarlet-KV2.1 into macaque V1 under electrophysiological guidance. We first investigated neural activity in response

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