Outer retinal degenerative diseases, such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), are among the leading causes of incurable blindness in the Western world []. Retinal prostheses have been shown to restore some useful vision by electrically stimulating the remaining retinal neurons []. In contrast to inherited retinal degenerative diseases (e.g., RP), typically leading to a complete loss of the visual field, in AMD patients the disease is localized to the macula, leaving the peripheral vision intact. Implanting a retinal prosthesis in the central macula in AMD patients [, ] leads to an intriguing situation where the patient’s central retina is stimulated electrically, whereas the peripheral healthy retina responds to natural light stimulation. An important question is whether the visual cortex responds to these two concurrent stimuli similarly to the interaction between two adjacent natural light stimuli projected onto healthy retina. Here, we investigated the cortical interactions between prosthetic and natural vision based on visually evoked potentials (VEPs) recorded in rats implanted with photovoltaic subretinal implants. Using this model, where prosthetic and natural vision information are combined in the visual cortex, we observed striking similarities in the interactions of natural and prosthetic vision, including similar effect of background illumination, linear summation of non-patterned stimuli, and lateral inhibition with spatial patterns [], which increased with target contrast. These results support the idea of combined prosthetic and natural vision in restoration of sight for AMD patients.

中文翻译：

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假肢和自然视觉之间的皮质相互作用

外层视网膜退行性疾病，例如色素性视网膜炎（RP）和年龄相关性黄斑变性（AMD），是西方世界无法治愈失明的主要原因之一。视网膜假体已被证明可以通过电刺激剩余的视网膜神经元来恢复一些有用的视力。与通常导致视野完全丧失的遗传性视网膜退行性疾病（例如 RP）相比，AMD 患者的疾病局限于黄斑，周边视力完好。在AMD患者的中央黄斑中植入视网膜假体会导致一种有趣的情况，即患者的中央视网膜受到电刺激，而周边健康的视网膜对自然光刺激做出反应。一个重要的问题是，视觉皮层对这两种同时发生的刺激的反应是否类似于投射到健康视网膜上的两个相邻自然光刺激之间的相互作用。在这里，我们根据植入光伏视网膜下植入物的大鼠中记录的视觉诱发电位（VEP）研究了假体和自然视觉之间的皮层相互作用。使用该模型，假肢视觉和自然视觉信息在视觉皮层中相结合，我们观察到自然视觉和假肢视觉相互作用的惊人相似之处，包括背景照明的相似效果、非模式刺激的线性求和以及空间侧向抑制。图案[]，随着目标对比度的增加而增加。这些结果支持了将假肢和自然视力相结合来恢复 AMD 患者视力的想法。