# Naturalistic electrical stimulation strategies for effective visual cortical prostheses

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA · 2024 · $676,945

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Blindness is devasting condition that impacts millions of people across the world. In most cases of adult-onset
blindness there is damage or dysfunction of the eye, retina, or optic nerve, but the visual cortex is left intact.
Direct electrical stimulation of visual cortex, even in blind patients, produces perception of distinct spots of light
known as phosphenes. It has long been recognized that this could form the basis for a visual cortical prosthesis
(VCP), a device which could greatly improve the quality of life for blind patients by restoring some visual function.
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in development of VCPs due to technical advances in
computing, wireless data and power transmission, and electrode arrays. While these advances have greatly
improved the interface with the cerebral cortex, substantial research is still required to determine how to use that
interface to communicate visual information using electrical stimulation. VCPs have typically used electrical
stimulation delivered in a way that provides an unnatural input to the visual cortex. This includes using a
sequence of electrical stimulation pulses delivered at an arbitrary fixed frequency and delivered in a manner that
is unrelated to ongoing cortical activity. Electrical stimulation delivered in this unnatural fashion has been one of
the key limitations in the development of effective VCPs. This proposal focuses on multiple ways to deliver
electrical stimulation in a more naturalistic fashion. Aim 1 examines the importance of stochastic variability in the
timing and amplitude of electrical stimulation pulses in generation of visual percepts. Aim 2 evaluates the
importance of coordinating electrical stimulation relative to patterns of ongoing cortical activity. If naturalistic
stimulation is more effective in generating visual percepts, this should be accompanied by more effective
activation of visual pathways, and this will be explicitly tested in Aim 3. This will be done by combining electrical
stimulation of visual cortex with functional imaging. Naturalistic electrical stimulation protocols could lower the
current requirements for future VCPs, and therefore improve device safety and longevity. More generally, the
results from these experiments may reveal general principals of how to effectively and efficiently encode
information into the cerebral cortex in other brain computer interface applications. Furthermore, determining the
most effective ways to input information into the brain using electrical stimulation could improve scientific
understanding of normal mechanisms of cortical information processing and the relationship between cortical
activity and perception.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10803035
- **Project number:** 2R01EY023336-10
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
- **Principal Investigator:** DANIEL YOSHOR
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $676,945
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2013-09-01 → 2028-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10803035

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10803035, Naturalistic electrical stimulation strategies for effective visual cortical prostheses (2R01EY023336-10). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10803035. Licensed CC0.

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