gms | German Medical Science

Artificial Vision 2017

The International Symposium on Visual Prosthetics

01.12. - 02.12.2017, Aachen

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Temporal filters of electrically stimulated retinal ganglion cells

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  • Larissa Höfling - Neurophysics Research Group, Natural and Medical Sciences Institute, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany; Graduate School of Neural Information Processing, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
  • F. Jetter - Neurophysics Research Group, Natural and Medical Sciences Institute, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany; Graduate School of Neural Information Processing, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
  • P. Berens - Institute of Ophthalmic Research, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany; Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany; Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
  • G. Zeck - Neurophysics Research Group, Natural and Medical Sciences Institute, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

Artificial Vision 2017. Aachen, 01.-02.12.2017. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2017. Doc17artvis21

doi: 10.3205/17artvis21, urn:nbn:de:0183-17artvis219

Published: November 30, 2017

© 2017 Höfling et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. See license information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Outline

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Motivation: We stimulate rd10 mouse retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) using a smooth electrical stimulus waveform to mimic physiological activity and to map their temporal electrical filters (TEF). The TEFs could guide the development of more efficient stimulation protocols for retinal prostheses.

Methods: We use a high-density CMOS-based microelectrode array to simultaneously deliver smoothed white Gaussian noise stimuli via 1024 capacitive stimulation electrodes and record on 4225 recording electrodes from adult rd10 mouse retina prepared ex vivo and interfaced with the chip in flat-mount epiretinal configuration. Our approach allows recording of single neuron activity during stimulation without interference from stimulus artefacts. Custom-written data analysis software is used to recover the temporal electrical receptive fields of RGCs.

Results: Using a physiologically plausible smoothed white Gaussian noise stimulus, we are able to activate retinal ganglion cells at low current densities (≤1.5 mA/cm²). Ganglion cell activity is evoked and modulated in a reliable manner for repetitive stimulus presentations. We found two distinct types of filters for ON and OFF cells, respectively, suggesting that ON and OFF cells may be activated selectively.

Conclusion: We present and discuss smooth electrical stimulation as an alternative to pulsatile stimuli for electrically activating retinal ganglion cells in degenerating mouse retina.

Acknowledgement: This research is supported by a grant of the Baden Württemberg Stiftung (RetNetControl, FKZ: NEU 013)