Insights from computational modelling: Characterising Midget and Parasol Retinal Ganglion Cells using Electrical Stimulation

Retinal prostheses seek to create artificial vision by stimulating surviving inner retinal neurons of patients with retinal degenerative diseases. However, the performance of all implants tested to date have remained rudimentary incapable of overcoming the threshold for legal blindness. Better understanding of retinal physiology under artificial electrical stimulation will be significantly improve the stimulation performance to create meaningful patterns of retinal outputs, that closely resemble those in natural vision. This in silico study characterize the electric response of two retinal ganglion cell (RGC) subtypes: midget and parasol cells in primate retina. The threshold difference between RGCs can be by influenced by RGC locations and multiple RGC morphological properties. The knowledge gained from this study could provide insights towards the design of the stimulation methods for next-generation visual prosthesis.