Neural Circuits and Systems Neuroscience
Author: Leonardo Ariel Cano | Email: lcano@herrera.unt.edu.ar
Fernando Daniel Farfán1°3°, Leonardo Ariel Cano3°,Leili Soo1°2°, Ana Lía Albarracín3°, Eduardo Fernández-Jover1°2°
1° Institute of Bioengineering, Universidad Miguel Hernández of Elche, Spain
2° Research Networking Center in Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN), Madrid, Spain.
3° Neuroscience and Applied Technologies Laboratory (LINTEC), Bioengineering Department, Faculty of Exact Sciences and Technology (FACET), National University of Tucuman, Instituto Superior de Investigaciones Biológicas (INSIBIO), National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Av. Independencia 1800, San Miguel de Tucuman 4000, Argentina
Electrophysiological studies have highlighted organizational and functional differences in the cortex of blind versus sighted individuals. This cortical reorganization allows the nervous system to adapt to new sensory modalities used in daily life. Visual cortical prostheses can restore visual sensations via phosphenes, offering blind individuals environmental information. Our study aims to characterize cortical alterations from the use of such neuroprostheses. In this preliminary approach, blind subjects used the prosthesis temporarily (6 months), where microelectrode arrays implanted in the primary visual cortex provided electrical stimulation to evoke phosphenes. Cortical connectivity (spectral coherence, SC) was analyzed during the resting state using EEG to explore the impact of prosthesis use. SC between all EEG channels revealed significant changes in specific frequency bands due to daily prosthesis use, with some bands showing less pronounced alterations. These preliminary results suggest that resting-state cortical connectivity significantly changes with the use of visual cortical prostheses, showing patterns similar to those of sighted individuals in some cases.