Cohen Ethan D
Division of Physics, Office of Science and Engineering Labs, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, HFZ130, 12725 Twinbrook Pkwy, Rockville, MD 20852, USA.
J Neural Eng. 2007 Jun;4(2):R14-31. doi: 10.1088/1741-2560/4/2/R02. Epub 2007 Mar 14.
The design of effective visual prostheses for the blind represents a challenge for biomedical engineers and neuroscientists. Significant progress has been made in the miniaturization and processing power of prosthesis electronics; however development lags in the design and construction of effective machine-brain interfaces with visual system neurons. This review summarizes what has been learned about stimulating neurons in the human and primate retina, lateral geniculate nucleus and visual cortex. Each level of the visual system presents unique challenges for neural interface design. Blind patients with the retinal degenerative disease retinitis pigmentosa (RP) are a common population in clinical trials of visual prostheses. The visual performance abilities of normals and RP patients are compared. To generate pattern vision in blind patients, the visual prosthetic interface must effectively stimulate the retinotopically organized neurons in the central visual field to elicit patterned visual percepts. The development of more biologically compatible methods of stimulating visual system neurons is critical to the development of finer spatial percepts. Prosthesis electrode arrays need to adapt to different optimal stimulus locations, stimulus patterns, and patient disease states.
为盲人设计有效的视觉假体对生物医学工程师和神经科学家来说是一项挑战。假体电子设备在小型化和处理能力方面取得了重大进展；然而，在与视觉系统神经元构建有效的机器-大脑接口的设计和构建方面，进展滞后。本综述总结了在刺激人类和灵长类动物视网膜、外侧膝状体核和视觉皮层神经元方面所学到的知识。视觉系统的每个层面在神经接口设计上都面临着独特的挑战。患有视网膜退行性疾病色素性视网膜炎（RP）的盲人患者是视觉假体临床试验中的常见群体。比较了正常人和RP患者的视觉表现能力。为了在盲人患者中产生模式视觉，视觉假体接口必须有效地刺激中央视野中按视网膜拓扑结构组织的神经元，以引发有模式的视觉感知。开发更具生物相容性的刺激视觉系统神经元的方法对于产生更精细的空间感知至关重要。假体电极阵列需要适应不同的最佳刺激位置、刺激模式和患者疾病状态。
