The ability to elicit visual percepts through electrical stimulation of the retina has prompted numerous investigations examining the feasibility of restoring sight to the blind with retinal implants. The therapeutic efficacy of these devices will be strongly influenced by their ability to elicit neural responses that approximate those of normal vision. Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) can fire spikes at frequencies greater than 200 Hz when driven by light. However, several studies using isolated retinas have found a decline in RGC spiking response rate when these cells were stimulated at greater than 50 Hz. It is possible that the mechanism responsible for this decline also contributes to the frequency-dependent 'fading' of electrically evoked percepts recently reported in human patients. Using whole-cell patch clamp recordings of rabbit RGCs, we investigated the causes for the spiking response depression during direct subretinal stimulation of these cells at 50–200 Hz. The respons...

Explanted rat retinas show progressive photoreceptor degeneration that appears to be caspase-12-dependent. Decrease in photoreceptor density eventually affects the inner retina, particularly in the bipolar cell population. Explantation and the induced photoreceptor degeneration are accompanied by activation of Müller and microglia cells. The goal of this study was to determine whether the presence of a feeder layer of human neural progenitor cells (hNPCs) could suppress the degenerative and reactive changes in the explants. Immunohistochemical analyses showed considerable sprouting of rod photoreceptor axon terminals into the inner retina and reduced densities of cone and rod bipolar cells. Both sprouting and bipolar cell degenerations were significantly lower in retinas cultured with feeder layer cells compared to cultured controls. A tendency toward reduced microglia activation in the retinal layers was also noted in the presence of feeder layer cells. These results indicate th...

Epidural electrical stimulation (ECS) of the motor cortex is a developing therapy for neurological disorders. Both placement and programming of ECS systems may affect the therapeutic outcome, but the treatment parameters that will maximize therapeutic outcomes and minimize side effects are not known. We delivered ECS to the motor cortex of anesthetized cats and investigated the effects of electrode placement and stimulation parameters on thresholds for evoking motor responses in the contralateral forelimb. Thresholds were inversely related to stimulation frequency and the number of pulses per stimulus train. Thresholds were lower over the forelimb representation in motor cortex (primary site) than surrounding sites (secondary sites), and thresholds at sites <4 mm away from the primary site were significantly lower than at sites >4 mm away. Electrode location and montage influenced the effects of polarity on thresholds: monopolar anodic and cathodic thresholds were not signi...

Digital holography is an emerging technology that can generate complex light patterns for controlling the excitability of neurons and neural circuits. The strengths of this technique include a high efficiency with which available light can be effectively utilized and the ability to deliver highly focused light to multiple locations simultaneously. Here we demonstrate another strength of digital holography: the ability to generate instantaneous three-dimensional light patterns. This capability is demonstrated with the photolysis of caged glutamate on the dendritic arbor of hippocampal neurons, to study the nature of the integration of inputs arriving on multiple dendritic branches.

We recently introduced a series of stimuli-responsive, mechanically adaptive polymer nanocomposites. Here, we report the first application of these bio-inspired materials as substrates for intracortical microelectrodes. Our hypothesis is that the ideal electrode should be initially stiff to facilitate minimal trauma during insertion into the cortex, yet become mechanically compliant to match the stiffness of the brain tissue and minimize forces exerted on the tissue, attenuating inflammation. Microprobes created from mechanically reinforced nanocomposites demonstrated a significant advantage compared to model microprobes composed of neat polymer only. The nanocomposite microprobes exhibit a higher storage modulus ( E' = ~5 GPa) than the neat polymer microprobes ( E' = ~2 GPa) and can sustain higher loads (~12 mN), facilitating penetration through the pia mater and insertion into the cerebral cortex of a rat. In contrast, the neat polymer microprobes mechanically faile...

Electrocorticography (ECoG) has emerged as a new signal platform for brain–computer interface (BCI) systems. Classically, the cortical physiology that has been commonly investigated and utilized for device control in humans has been brain signals from the sensorimotor cortex. Hence, it was unknown whether other neurophysiological substrates, such as the speech network, could be used to further improve on or complement existing motor-based control paradigms. We demonstrate here for the first time that ECoG signals associated with different overt and imagined phoneme articulation can enable invasively monitored human patients to control a one-dimensional computer cursor rapidly and accurately. This phonetic content was distinguishable within higher gamma frequency oscillations and enabled users to achieve final target accuracies between 68% and 91% within 15 min. Additionally, one of the patients achieved robust control using recordings from a microarray consisting of 1 mm spaced m...

The ongoing pilot clinical trial of the BrainGate neural interface system aims in part to assess the feasibility of using neural activity obtained from a small-scale, chronically implanted, intracortical microelectrode array to provide control signals for a neural prosthesis system. Critical questions include how long implanted microelectrodes will record useful neural signals, how reliably those signals can be acquired and decoded, and how effectively they can be used to control various assistive technologies such as computers and robotic assistive devices, or to enable functional electrical stimulation of paralyzed muscles. Here we examined these questions by assessing neural cursor control and BrainGate system characteristics on five consecutive days 1000 days after implant of a 4 × 4 mm array of 100 microelectrodes in the motor cortex of a human with longstanding tetraplegia subsequent to a brainstem stroke. On each of five prospectively-selected days we performed time-amplit...