Retinal ganglion cell (RGC) responses to different voltage stimulation parameters in rd1 mouse retina

Retinal prostheses are being developed to restore vision for the blind with retinal diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP) or age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Since neural prostheses depend upon electrical stimulation to control neural activity, optimal stimulation parameters for successful encoding of visual information are one of the most important requirements to enable visual perception. Therefore, in this paper, we focused on RGC responses to different stimulation parameters in degenerated retina. For this purpose, we used in vitro preparation of rd1 mice retina on microelectrode arrays. When the neural network of rd1 mice retinas is stimulated with voltage-controlled pulses, RGCs in degenerated retina also respond to voltage amplitude or voltage duration modulation as well in wild-type RGCs. But the temporal pattern of RGCs response is very different; in wild-type RGCs, single peak within 100 ms appears while in RGCs in degenerated retina multiple peaks (~4 peaks) with ~10 Hz rhythm within 400 ms appear. The threshold charge densities for activation of RGCs in rd1 mouse retinas were on average 70.50 ~ 99.87 μC/cm² in the experiment of voltage amplitude modulation and 120.5 ~ 170.6 μC/cm² in the experiment of voltage duration modulation.