Pulse Trains to Percepts: the Challenge of Creating a Perceptually Intelligible World with Sight Recovery Technologies

Overview

Journal Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci

Specialty Biology

Date 2015 Aug 5

PMID 26240423

Citations 24

Authors

Ione Fine

Geoffrey M Boynton

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

An extraordinary variety of sight recovery therapies are either about to begin clinical trials, have begun clinical trials, or are currently being implanted in patients. However, as yet we have little insight into the perceptual experience likely to be produced by these implants. This review focuses on methodologies, such as optogenetics, small molecule photoswitches and electrical prostheses, which use artificial stimulation of the retina to elicit percepts. For each of these technologies, the interplay between the stimulating technology and the underlying neurophysiology is likely to result in distortions of the perceptual experience. Here, we describe some of these potential distortions and discuss how they might be minimized either through changes in the encoding model or through cortical plasticity.

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