Abstract
Ultrasound is an emerging method for non-invasive neuromodulation. Studies in the past have demonstrated that ultrasound can reversibly activate and inhibit neural activities in the brain. Recent research shows the possibility of using ultrasound ranging from 0.5 to 43 MHz in acoustic frequency to activate the retinal neurons without causing detectable damages to the cells. This review recapitulates pilot studies that explored retinal responses to the ultrasound exposure, discusses the advantages and limitations of the ultrasonic stimulation, and offers an overview of engineering perspectives in developing an acoustic retinal prosthesis. For comparison, this article also presents studies in the ultrasonic stimulation of the visual cortex. Despite that, the summarized research is still in an early stage; ultrasonic retinal stimulation appears to be a viable technology that exhibits enormous therapeutic potential for non-invasive vision restoration.
Highlights
Outer retinal degenerative diseases are common causes of blindness, characterized by the progressive deterioration of the photoreceptors that results in permanent vision loss [1,2]
In dry Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD), retinal atrophy arises from accumulation of yellow deposits called drusen in the macula between the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and choroid
Focused ultrasonic stimulation of the retina was first reported by Naor et al, who collected visually evoked potentials (VEPs) under the retinal stimulation with low-frequency ultrasound (0.5 MHz and 1 MHz) in the anesthetized wild-type Sprague–Dawley rats [37]
Summary
Outer retinal degenerative diseases are common causes of blindness, characterized by the progressive deterioration of the photoreceptors that results in permanent vision loss [1,2]. In both conditions, a significant number of inner retinal neurons downstream of the photoreceptor layer remain capable of functioning, despite significant remodeling and reorganization of the retinal circuitry (refer to Masland et al [11] and Marc et al [12] for a review). Inner retinal stimulation has drawn significant attention in the past two decades, spawning a number of studies in two major vision restoration approaches: (1) Bioelectronic and optoelectronic retinal implants and (2) inner retinal modifications with optogenetic tools and photochemical switches (Figure 1) The former approach typically involves encoding visual inputs into artificially generated and amplified electrical currents.
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