Walston Steven T, Chow Robert H, Weiland James D
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2015;2015:3363-6. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2015.7319113.
Retinitis pigmentosa is a family of inherited retinal diseases identified by the degeneration of photoreceptors, which leads to blindness. In efforts to restore vision lost to retinitis pigmentosa, retinal prostheses have been developed to generate visual percepts by electrically stimulating the surviving retinal bipolar and ganglion cells. The response of retinal ganglion cells to electrical stimulation has been characterized through direct measurement. However, the response of bipolar cells has only been inferred by measuring retinal ganglion cell activity. This investigation reports on a novel tissue preparation technique facilitating bipolar cell patch clamp recordings in wholemount retina. We find that bipolar cells respond to extracellular electrical stimuli with time-locked voltage spike depolarizations, which are likely mediated by voltage-gated calcium channels.
视网膜色素变性是一类遗传性视网膜疾病，其特征是光感受器退化，最终导致失明。为了恢复因视网膜色素变性而丧失的视力，人们研发了视网膜假体，通过电刺激存活的视网膜双极细胞和神经节细胞来产生视觉感知。视网膜神经节细胞对电刺激的反应已通过直接测量得以表征。然而，双极细胞的反应仅通过测量视网膜神经节细胞的活性来推断。本研究报告了一种新颖的组织制备技术，该技术有助于在全层视网膜中进行双极细胞膜片钳记录。我们发现，双极细胞对细胞外电刺激会产生与时间锁定的电压尖峰去极化反应，这可能是由电压门控钙通道介导的。
