Spatiotemporal interactions in the visual cortex following paired electrical stimulation of the retina

Abstract

Purpose: Retinal prostheses use spatiotemporal patterns of electrical stimulation across multiple electrodes to provide visual percepts to blind patients. It is generally assumed that percepts produced by individual electrodes are independent of one another, which may not be the case. In this study, we aimed to quantify interactions between pairs of electrical stimuli delivered to the retina.Methods. Normally sighted cats were implanted with a suprachoroidal electrode array: The retina was stimulated with a paired-pulse paradigm that consisted of a conditioning stimulus followed by a test stimulus, while recording multiunit activity in the visual cortex. Conditioning current, and spatial and..