Eliciting Naturalistic Cortical Responses with a Sensory Prosthesis via Optimized Microstimulation

摘要: Abstract : Objective. Lost sensations, such as touch, could one day be restored by electrical stimulation along the sensory neural pathways. Such stimulation, when informed electronic sensors, provide naturalistic cutaneous and proprioceptive feedback to user. Perceptually, microstimulation of somatosensory brain regions produces localized, modality-specific several spatiotemporal parameters have been studied for their discernibility. However, systematic methods encoding a wide array naturally occurring stimuli into biomimetic percepts via multi-channel are lacking. More specifically, generating patterns explicitly evoking activation has not yet explored. Approach. We address this problem first modeling dynamical inputoutput relationship between multichannel downstream responses, then optimizing input pattern reproduce touch responses closely possible. Main results. Here we show that optimization in S1 cortex anesthetized rat highly similar natural, tactile-stimulus-evoked counterparts. Furthermore, information on both pressure location stimulus was found preserved. Significance. Our results suggest currently presented approach holds great promise restoring levels sensation.