Xing Chen, PhD, Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology, has won grant funding from an industry partner for a new project in her lab.
Blackrock Neurotech is awarding $740,510.62 for one year.
“The goal of the project is to interface with a subcortical structure of the primate brain (thalamus) and carry out electrical stimulation to elicit artificially produced visual percepts (phosphenes) and lay the foundations for a brain-computer interface via the thalamus,” explained Dr. Chen.
Previous work has focused on interfacing with the visual cortex, rather than the thalamus, hence this approach is underexplored. Dr. Chen’s lab will first study neuronal activity in the thalamus (specifically, the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus), to better understand how visual processing occurs in this subcortical structure. Thereafter, they will also carry out electrical stimulation while the animals report their percepts, allowing them to better understand the potential of targeting this brain area via brain-computer interfaces in future blind patients.