Dynamic Electrical Stimulation of Sites in Visual Cortex Produces Form Vision in Sighted and Blind Humans

Abstract

Visual cortical prosthetics (VCPs) offer the promise of restoring sight to blind patients. Electrical stimulation of a single site in visual cortex can reliably produce a percept of a spot of light in a fixed visual field location, known as a phosphene. Researchers developing VCPs have assumed that multiple phosphenes produced by concurrent stimulation of multiple sites in visual cortex can combine to form a coherent form, like pixels in a visual display. However, existing data do not support this assumption. Therefore, we developed a novel stimulation paradigm for VCPs termed dynamic current steering in which the visual form to be conveyed is traced on the surface of visual cortex by electrically stimulating electrodes in a dynamic sequence. When tested in sighted and blind subjects, this method of stimulating visual cortex allowed for the immediate recognition of a variety of letter shapes without training and with high accuracy.\n\nOne Sentence SummaryStimulating human visual cortex using dynamic patterns of activity allows both blind and sighted patients to perceive visual percepts of useful forms.