Learning to See Again: Biological Constraints on Cortical Plasticity and the Implications for Sight Restoration Technologies

Beyeler, Michael; Rokem, Ariel; Boynton, Geoffrey M.; Fine, Ione

doi:10.1101/115188

Cited by 19 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 219 publications

(289 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The shader then used these values to generate each phosphene's tail, following the underlying axon fibres. The tail's brightness would dissipate as a function of the distance from its phosphene, using the activation function described in [25]. Finally, the tails were superimposed on top of the original phosphene image.…”

Section: Simulation Of Prosthetic Visionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual reality simulation of epi-retinal prosthetic vision highlights the relevance of the visual angle

Thorn

Migliorini

Ghezzi

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective. Retinal prostheses hold the potential to restore artificial vision in blind patients suffering from outer retinal dystrophies. The optimal number, density, and coverage of the electrodes that a retinal prosthesis should have to provide adequate artificial vision in daily activities is still an open question and an important design parameter needed to develop better implants. Approach. To address this question, we investigated the interaction between the visual angle, the pixel number and the pixel density without being limited by a small electrode count, as in previous research reports. We implemented prosthetic vision in a virtual reality environment in order to simulate the real-life experience of using a retinal prosthesis. We designed four different tasks simulating: object recognition, word reading, perception of a descending step and crossing a street. Main results. The results of our study showed that in all the tasks the visual angle played the most significant role in improving the performance of the participant. Significance. The design of new retinal prostheses should take into account the relevance of the restored visual angle to provide a helpful and valuable visual aid to profoundly or totally blind patients.

show abstract

Section: Simulation Of Prosthetic Visionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual reality simulation of epi-retinal prosthetic vision highlights the relevance of the visual angle

Thorn

Migliorini

Ghezzi

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The model has been shown to generalize across individual electrodes, patients, and devices, as well as across different experiments. Detailed methods of how the model was validated can be found in [HGW + 09], [NFH + 12], [BRBF17]. Here we provide a brief overview of the model cascade.…”

Section: Computational Model Of Bionic Visionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One major challenge in the development of retinal prostheses is predicting what patients will see when they use their devices. Interactions between implant electronics and the underlying neurophysiology cause nontrivial perceptual distortions in both space and time [FB15], [BRBF17] that severely limit the quality of the generated visual experience.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, clinical experience with existing retinal prostheses makes it apparent that the vision provided by these devices differs substantially from normal sight. Interactions between implant electronics and the underlying neurophysiology cause nontrivial perceptual distortions in both space and time [FB15], [BRBF17] that severely limit the quality of the generated visual experience. For example, stimulating a single electrode rarely produces the experience of a 'dot' of light.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

pulse2percept: A Python-based simulation framework for bionic vision

Beyeler

Boynton

Fine

et al. 2017

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

By 2020 roughly 200 million people worldwide will suffer from photoreceptor diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration, and a variety of retinal sight restoration technologies are being developed to target these diseases. One technology, analogous to cochlear implants, uses a grid of electrodes to stimulate remaining retinal cells. Two brands of retinal prostheses are currently approved for implantation in patients with late stage photoreceptor disease. Clinical experience with these implants has made it apparent that the vision restored by these devices differs substantially from normal sight. To better understand the outcomes of this technology, we developed pulse2percept, an open-source Python implementation of a computational model that predicts the perceptual experience of retinal prosthesis patients across a wide range of implant configurations. A modular and extensible user interface exposes the different building blocks of the software, making it easy for users to simulate novel implants, stimuli, and retinal models. We hope that this library will contribute substantially to the field of medicine by providing a tool to accelerate the development of visual prostheses.

show abstract

“…Studies under simulated prosthetic vision identified a visual angle of 30 degrees as the minimal requirement to efficiently complete everyday mobility and manipulation tasks [27][28][29][30] . However, this number might underestimate the real needs of retinal prostheses' users, which exhibit poor performance in those tasks, due to the perceptual learning and behavioural adaptation issues to the new form of partial and spatially fractioned artificial vision 31,32 . The visual angle is a significant bottleneck preventing patients from achieving an efficient performance and a sustainable experience.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Single-pixel epiretinal stimulation with a wide-field and high-density retinal prosthesis for artificial vision

Chenais

Leccardi

Ghezzi

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Retinal prostheses hold the promise of restoring artificial vision in profoundly and totally blind people. However, a decade of clinical trials highlighted quantitative limitations hampering the possibility to reach this goal. A key obstacle to suitable retinal stimulation is the ability to independently activate retinal neurons over a large portion of the subject’s visual field. Reaching such a goal would significantly improve the perception accuracy in the users of retinal implants, along with their spatial cognition, attention, ambient mapping and interaction with the environment. Here we show a wide-field, high-density and high-resolution photovoltaic epiretinal prosthesis for artificial vision. The prosthesis embeds 10,498 physically and functionally independent photovoltaic pixels allowing for both wide retinal coverage and high-resolution stimulation. Single-pixel illumination reproducibly induced network-mediated responses from retinal ganglion cells at safe irradiance levels. Furthermore, the prosthesis enables a sub-receptive field response resolution for retinal ganglion cells having a dendritic tree larger than the pixel’s pitch. This approach could allow the restoration of mid-peripheric artificial vision in patients with retinitis pigmentosa.

show abstract

Learning to See Again: Biological Constraints on Cortical Plasticity and the Implications for Sight Restoration Technologies

Cited by 19 publications

References 219 publications

Virtual reality simulation of epi-retinal prosthetic vision highlights the relevance of the visual angle

Virtual reality simulation of epi-retinal prosthetic vision highlights the relevance of the visual angle

pulse2percept: A Python-based simulation framework for bionic vision

Single-pixel epiretinal stimulation with a wide-field and high-density retinal prosthesis for artificial vision

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About