Multichannel stimulation module as a tool for animal studies on cortical neural prostheses.

Intracortical microstimulation to the visual cortex is thought to be a feasible technique for inducing localized phosphenes in patients with acquired blindness, and thereby for visual prosthesis. In order to design effective stimuli for the prosthesis, it is important to elucidate relationships between the spatio-temporal patterns of stimuli and the resulting neural responses and phosphenes through pre-clinical animal studies. However, the physiological basis of effective spatial patterns of the stimuli for the prosthesis has been little investigated in the literature, at least partly because that the previously developed multi-channel stimulation systems were designed specifically for the clinical use.

Age-related changes in the spatiotemporal responses to electrical stimulation in the visual cortex of rats with progressive vision loss.

The Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) rat gradually loses vision due to retinal degeneration. Previous physiological studies have depicted the progressive loss of optical responses in the visual pathway, including the primary visual cortex (V1), over the course of retinal degeneration in the RCS rat. However, little is known about how the excitability of the V1 circuit changes during over the course of the gradual loss of visual signal input from the retina.

Cortical neural excitations in rats in vivo with using a prototype of a wireless multi-channel microstimulation system.

Understanding neural responses to multi-site electrical stimuli would be of essential importance for developing cortical neural prostheses. In order to provide a tool for such studies in experimental animals, we recently constructed a prototype of a wireless multi-channel microstimulation system, consisting of a stimulator chip, wireless data/power transmitters and receivers, and microcomputers. The proper operations of the system in cortical neural excitations were examined in anesthetized rats in vivo, with utilizing the voltage-sensitive dye imaging technique.