RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Photovoltaic stimulation efficiently evokes network-mediated activity of retinal ganglion cells
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 652404
DO 10.1101/652404
A1 Naïg A. L. Chenais
A1 Marta J. I. Airaghi Leccardi
A1 Diego Ghezzi
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/06/07/652404.abstract
AB Objective Photovoltaic retinal prostheses theoretically offer the possibility of standalone high-resolution electrical stimulation of the retina. However, in artificial vision, achieving locally selective epiretinal stimulation is particularly challenging, on the grounds of axonal activation and electrical cell coupling.Approach Here we show that electrical and photovoltaic stimulation of dystrophic retinal circuits with capacitive-like pulses leads to a greater efficiency for indirect network-mediated activation of retinal ganglion cells. In addition, a biophysical model of the inner retina stimulation is proposed to investigate the waveform and duration commitments in the genesis of indirect activity of retinal ganglion cells.Main results Both in-vitro and in-silico approaches suggest that the application of long voltage pulses or gradual voltage changes are more effective to sustainably activate the inner excitatory and inhibitory layers of the retina, thus leading to a reproducible indirect response. The involvement of the inhibitory feedback from amacrine cells in the forming of indirect patterns represents a novel biological tool to locally cluster the response of the retinal ganglion cells.Significance These results demonstrate that recruiting inner retina cells with epiretinal stimulation enables not only to bypass axonal stimulation but also to obtain a more focal activation thanks to the natural lateral inhibition. In this perspective, the use of capacitive-like waveforms generated by photovoltaic prostheses may allow improving the neural response resolution while standing high-frequency stimulation.