Visual Form Perception Produced by Electrically Stimulating Human Visual Cortex

描述（由申请人提供）：失明使世界各地数百万人残疾。在大多数情况下，无法治愈的失明是由眼睛，视网膜或视神经的损伤或功能障碍引起的，但视觉皮层未受损并具有潜在的功能。长期以来，人们一直有兴趣开发一种假体装置，该装置采用直接激活完整的视觉 恢复盲人的视力。电刺激视觉皮层的一个部位（盲人的evn）会产生一个被称为光幻视的独特光点。据推测，光幻视可以作为盲人视觉恢复的基石，但目前还不清楚单个光幻视是否可以被视为虚拟的“像素”，并结合起来产生对复杂图像的感知。解决这个问题对于确定直接激活视觉皮层是否是恢复有用视力的可行策略至关重要。我们建议研究植入颅内电极的人类患者视觉皮层刺激的感知相关性。研究人类刺激诱导感知的一个主要优势是，只有人类受试者才能直接报告他们的感知体验。在目标1中，我们将比较通过人工刺激种群产生的光幻视的空间位置和方向 和这些神经元对真实的视觉刺激的反应。在目标2中，我们将确定这些光幻视是否可以用作更复杂的视觉感知（就像计算机显示器中的像素）的构建块，这是朝着开发皮质视觉假体的长期目标迈出的关键一步。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): 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 (evn 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.