Thalamic Visual Prosthetics

This lecture explores the potential of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) as a target for artificial vision, demonstrating that tree shrews can detect optogenetic LGN activation and generalize from visual to optogenetic detection. Temporal aspects of artificial stimulation are examined, revealing differences in stimulus encoding between thalamic and cortical representations. Neural decoding analyses in LGN and primary visual cortex (V1) provide insights into the properties of LGN neural responses relevant for artificial vision.