Brain stimulation in Elche

We visited the lab of Eduardo Fernandez in Elche where they develop a cortical visual prosthesis.

The last three days in the lab of Eduardo Fernandez at the Miguel Hernandez University in Elche were very inspiring. Eduardo and his team develop a neuroprosthesis for blind people – an array of microelectrodes implanted in the visual cortex. When the electrodes are stimulated, the subjects see dots of light called phosphenes. It is amazing how much new and unexpected knowledge we learn from every single every participant in the study. The visual experience from electrical stimulation is so different for each of the volunteers! We are very thankful that we could design some experiments that generated extremely valuable data for us.

For the first time in our lives, we also saw a beautiful response of a retinal gangion cell to drifting gratings. Cristina Soto Sanchez invited us to look at her in vitro recordings from a mouse retina stimulated by various stimuli. It is so exciting to hear the responses of the cells in real time! And also to see Cristina so excited about our excitement. :)