Visual Form Perception Produced by Electrically Stimulating Human Visual Cortex

电刺激人类视觉皮层产生的视觉形式感知

基本信息

批准号：
8596504
负责人：
DANIEL YOSHOR
金额：
$ 33.82万
依托单位：
BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
2013
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2013-09-01 至 2017-08-31
项目状态：
已结题

项目摘要

Project Summary/Abstract Blindness disables millions of people across the world. In most cases, incurable blindness is caused by damage or dysfunction of the eye, retina, or optic nerve, but the visual cortex is undamaged and potentially functional. There has long been interest in developing a prosthetic device that employs direct activation of the intact visual cortex to restore vision to the blind. Electrical stimulation of a single site in visual cortex (even in blind patients) produces a percept of a distinct spot of light known as a phosphene. It has been speculated that phosphenes could serve as the building blocks for visual restoration in the blind, but it is unknown if individual phosphenes can be treated as virtual "pixels" and combined to produce perception of complex images. Addressing this issue is critical to determining if direct activation of visual cortex is a viable strategy for restoring useful vision. We propose to study perceptual correlates of visual cortex stimulation in human patients with implanted intracranial electrodes. A major advantage of studying stimulation-induced percepts in humans is that only human subjects can directly report on their perceptual experiences. In Aim 1, we will compare the spatial location and orientation of phosphenes created by artificially stimulating a population of visual neurons with the responses of these same neurons to real visual stimuli. In Aim 2, we will determine if these phosphenes can be used as building blocks for more complex visual percepts (much like pixels in a computer display) a key step towards the long-term goal of developing a cortical visual prosthetic.

项目概要/摘要失明导致全世界数百万人丧失能力。大多数情况下是无法治愈的失明是由眼睛、视网膜或视神经损伤或功能障碍引起的，但视觉皮层未受损且具有潜在功能。有很长一段时间一直有兴趣开发一种直接激活的假肢装置完整的视觉皮层，使盲人恢复视力。电刺激视觉皮层中的单个部位（即使是盲人患者）也会产生对不同物体的感知称为光幻视的光点。据推测，光幻视可以作为盲人视觉恢复的基石，但它是未知单个光幻视是否可以被视为虚拟“像素”并组合起来产生复杂图像的感知。解决这个问题至关重要确定直接激活视觉皮层是否是恢复的可行策略有用的愿景。我们建议研究视觉皮层的感知相关性对植入颅内电极的人类患者进行刺激。一个专业研究人类刺激引起的感知的优点是人类受试者可以直接报告他们的感知体验。在目标 1 中，我们将比较由以下方法产生的光幻视的空间位置和方向通过这些神经元的反应人工刺激视觉神经元群相同的神经元对真实的视觉刺激。在目标 2 中，我们将确定这些是否光幻视可以用作更复杂视觉感知的构建块（很像计算机显示器中的像素）是实现长期目标的关键一步开发皮质视觉假体。