Lorach Henri, Goetz Georges, Smith Richard, Lei Xin, Mandel Yossi, Kamins Theodore, Mathieson Keith, Huie Philip, Harris James, Sher Alexander, Palanker Daniel
1] Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA. [2] Department of Ophthalmology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA. [3] Inserm UMR_S968, Institut de la Vision, Paris, France.
1] Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA. [2] Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
Nat Med. 2015 May;21(5):476-82. doi: 10.1038/nm.3851. Epub 2015 Apr 27.
Patients with retinal degeneration lose sight due to the gradual demise of photoreceptors. Electrical stimulation of surviving retinal neurons provides an alternative route for the delivery of visual information. We demonstrate that subretinal implants with 70-μm-wide photovoltaic pixels provide highly localized stimulation of retinal neurons in rats. The electrical receptive fields recorded in retinal ganglion cells were similar in size to the natural visual receptive fields. Similarly to normal vision, the retinal response to prosthetic stimulation exhibited flicker fusion at high frequencies, adaptation to static images and nonlinear spatial summation. In rats with retinal degeneration, these photovoltaic arrays elicited retinal responses with a spatial resolution of 64 ± 11 μm, corresponding to half of the normal visual acuity in healthy rats. The ease of implantation of these wireless and modular arrays, combined with their high resolution, opens the door to the functional restoration of sight in patients blinded by retinal degeneration.
患有视网膜变性的患者由于光感受器逐渐死亡而失明。对存活的视网膜神经元进行电刺激为视觉信息的传递提供了一条替代途径。我们证明，具有70微米宽光伏像素的视网膜下植入物能对大鼠视网膜神经元进行高度局部化刺激。在视网膜神经节细胞中记录到的电感受野大小与自然视觉感受野相似。与正常视觉类似，视网膜对假体刺激的反应在高频时表现出闪烁融合、对静态图像的适应以及非线性空间总和。在患有视网膜变性的大鼠中，这些光伏阵列引发的视网膜反应的空间分辨率为64±11微米，相当于健康大鼠正常视力的一半。这些无线且模块化阵列易于植入，再加上其高分辨率，为因视网膜变性而失明的患者恢复视力功能打开了大门。
