Towards cortical visual prosthetics

描述(申请人提供)：视觉对象识别对于大多数日常任务至关重要，包括人脸识别、阅读和导航。尽管在过去的20年里，计算能力有了巨大的提高，但即使在简单的识别任务中，3岁的孩子仍然比最复杂的算法表现得更好。了解人类视觉系统识别物体的计算过程，不仅对了解大脑皮层的功能(和故障)，而且对为视障人士开发视觉假体设备具有深远的意义。我们将神经生理学、电刺激和机器学习的工具结合起来，以加深我们对人类视觉系统执行视觉模式识别所执行的神经元电路、算法和计算的理解。在绝大多数视力受损或失明的人中，问题起源于视网膜水平，而视觉皮质保持不受损害。我们的提议构成了一种开发依赖于视觉皮质电刺激的视觉假体设备的原则证明方法。该方案的具体目的是测试在视觉皮层中对信息进行解码和重新编码的可能性：(1)在线读出人类视觉皮质中的视觉信息(2)在人类视觉皮质中写入视觉信息。我们利用一个难得的机会，通过研究因临床原因而植入电极的患者，以高空间和时间分辨率研究人脑。我们的电生理记录为我们提供了人类颞叶电路的独特视角，并允许我们测试皮质视觉假体在表现为人类受试者中的可行性。公共卫生相关性：对于皮质视觉假体，视障和盲人面临的主要挑战之一是缺乏视觉对象识别能力。视觉识别对于包括导航和人脸识别在内的大多数日常任务至关重要。我们的建议是一种基于视觉皮质电刺激的视觉假体设备开发的原则证明方法。

Description (provided by applicant): Visual object recognition is crucial for most everyday tasks including face identification, reading and navigation. In spite of the massive increase in computational power over the last two decades, a 3-year-old still outperforms the most sophisticated algorithms even in simple recognition tasks. Understanding the computations performed by the human visual system to recognize objects will have profound implications not only to understand the functions (and malfunction) of the cerebral cortex but also for developing visual prosthetic devices for the visually impaired. We combine neurophysiology, electrical stimulation and tools from machine learning to further our understanding of the neuronal circuits, algorithms and computations performed by the human visual system to perform visual pattern recognition. In the vast majority of visually impaired or blind people, the problems originate at the level of the retina while the visual cortex remains unimpaired. Our proposal constitutes a proof- of-principle approach towards developing visual prosthetic devices that rely on electrical stimulation of visual cortex. The specific aims of this proposal are designed to test the possibility of decoding and recoding information in visual cortex: (1) Read-out of visual information from human visual cortex on line (2) Write-in of visual information in human visual cortex. We take advantage of a rare opportunity to study the human brain at high spatial and temporal resolution by studying patients who have electrodes implanted for clinical reasons. Our electrophysiological recordings provide us with a unique view of the human temporal lobe circuitry and allow us to test the feasibility of cortical visual prosthetics in behaving human subjects. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Towards cortical visual prosthetics one of the key challenges for the visually impaired and blind people is the lack of visual object recognition capabilities. Visual recognition is crucial for most everyday tasks including navigation and face identification. Our proposal is a proof-of-principle approach towards the development of visual prosthetics devices based on electrical stimulation in visual cortex.