Preferential modulation of individual retinal ganglion cells by electrical stimulation

Abstract

Objective. Retinal prostheses have had limited success in vision restoration through electrical stimulation of surviving retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in the degenerated retina. This is partly due to non-preferential stimulation of all RGCs near a single stimulating electrode, which include cells that conflict in their response properties and their contribution to visiual processing. Our study proposes a stimulation strategy to preferentially stimulate individual RGCs based on their temporal electrical receptive fields (tERFs). Approach. We recorded the responses of RGCs using whole-cell patch clamping and demonstrated the stimulation strategy, first using intracellular stimulation, then via..