Description

For blind patients who cannot profit from a retinal implant, intracortical visual prostheses offer great promise. However, at the time, intracortical prostheses have had limited success, mainly because they require strong stimulation currents, which generate non-specific percepts and also bears the risk of tissue damage. We address these limitations by targeting complex response properties of neural populations in areas beyond primary visual cortex to generate more specific percepts and link electrical stimulation patterns in a closed-loop setup. Generally, our approaches shall provide further insight into brain dynamics, while exploring options for its external stimulation and the potential of interfaces to target perceptual content.

Collaboration partners:

Udo Ernst (Coordinator) and David Rotermund Computational Neurophysics, Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Bremen.

Bogdan Draganski Laboratory for Research in Neuroimaging, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, CHUV and University of Lau-sanne (UNIL), Lausanne, Switzerland.

Michael Herzog Laboratory of Psychophysics, École Polytechnique Fédérale Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.

Christopher Pack Dept. of Neurology & Neurosurgery and Montréal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montréal, Canada.

Thomas Knöpfel Optogenetics and Circuit Neurosciences at Imperial College, Division of Brain Sciencesl, UK.