Learning to see again: biological constraints on cortical plasticity and the implications for sight restoration technologies

学习再次看见：皮质可塑性的生物学限制及其对视力恢复技术的影响

• 批准号: 10738980
• 负责人: GEOFFREY M BOYNTON
• 金额: $ 3.75万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-05-01 至 2026-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10738980
• 关键词: Adult; Area; Biological; Cells; Computer Models; Cues; Data; Electronics; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Generations; Goals; Image; Implant; Lateral; Learning; Measures; Modeling; Occipital lobe; Participant; Patients; Physiological; Play; Prosthesis; Psychophysics; Recovery; Research; Retina; Role; Technology; Training; Vision; Visual; Visual Cortex; Visual Perception; Visually Impaired Persons; Work; experience; gene therapy; insight; neural; neurophysiology; novel; optogenetics; response; retina implantation; sight restoration

ABSTRACT The field of sight restoration has made dramatic progress: within a decade, many blind individuals are likely to be offered a wide range of options for sight restoration that depend on widely different technologies, including retinal implants, cortical implants and optogenetics. However, interactions between implant electronics and the underlying neurophysiology of the retina or cortex mean that the vision provided by most of these technologies will differ substantially from normal sight. What role does cortical plasticity play in helping patients make use of this artificial visual input? Over the past 15 years our research group has been generating computational models, developed using a combination of physiological and psychophysical data, which predict the percepts that patients might experience for a variety of sight recovery technologies. We propose to use these models to simulate, within visually normal participants, a critical neurophysiological distortion inherent in many sight restoration technologies: the simultaneous stimulation of on and off cells. Our goal is to see how training with this distorted input alters neural representations in object selective areas such as lateral occipital cortex (LOC). Using fMRI, we will measure neural responses to distorted and undistorted objects, before and after training with distorted input. One possibility is that learning to recognize distorted objects results in distorted object images becoming cues for previously learned neural representations within LOC. The alternative is that this training results in the generation of novel representations within LOC. This work will provide novel insights regarding the fundamental mechanisms of cortical plasticity by asking whether, in adulthood, it is possible to reconfigure the fundamental building blocks of visual perception?

摘要 视力恢复领域取得了巨大的进步：在十年内，许多盲人 个人可能会被提供广泛的选择，以恢复视力，这取决于 广泛不同的技术，包括视网膜植入，皮质植入和光遗传学。 然而，植入电子设备和潜在的神经生理学之间的相互作用， 视网膜或皮层意味着大多数这些技术提供的视觉将有所不同 基本上从正常的视线。 在帮助患者利用这种人工视觉方面， 输入？在过去的15年里，我们的研究小组一直在生成计算模型， 使用生理和心理物理数据的组合开发，这些数据预测了 患者可能会经历各种视力恢复技术。我们提出 使用这些模型来模拟，在视觉正常的参与者中， 在许多视力恢复技术中固有的神经生理学失真： 刺激开和关细胞。 我们的目标是看看用这种扭曲的输入进行训练如何改变物体中的神经表征。 选择性区域，如外侧枕叶皮质（lateral occipital cortex，简称OCL）。使用fMRI，我们将测量神经 在使用失真输入训练之前和之后，对失真和未失真对象的响应。 一种可能性是学习识别扭曲的物体导致扭曲的物体图像 成为先前学习过的神经表征的线索。另一种选择是， 这种训练导致在RNN内产生新的表示。这项工作将 提供了关于皮层可塑性的基本机制的新见解， 在成年期，是否有可能重新配置视觉的基本组成部分， 感知？