"Braille" reading by a blind volunteer by visual cortex stimulation.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
SEARCH · Search PubMed
Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
A key question in understanding visual awareness is whether any single cortical area is indispensable. In a transcranial magnetic stimulation experiment, we show that observers' awareness of activity in extrastriate area V5 depends on the amount of activity in striate cortex (V1). From the timing and pattern of effects, we infer that back-projections from extrastriate cortex influence information content in V1, but it is V1 that determines whether that information reaches awareness.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
After loss of a particular sensory channel, the deprived cortex can be activated by inputs from other sensory modalities. It is not known whether activation of the rewired cortex evokes subjective experiences characteristic of that cortex or consistent with the rerouted sensory information. In a previous study, blind subjects were trained to perform visual tasks with a tongue display unit, a sensory substitution device that translates visual displays into electrotactile tongue stimulation. This cross-modal sensory stimulation activated their visual cortices. We now extend this finding by using transcranial magnetic stimulation to examine the perceptual correlates of training-induced plastic responses. We find that blind subjects proficient with the use of the tongue display unit report somatopically organized tactile sensations that are referred to the tongue when transcranial magnetic stimulation is applied over the occipital cortex. No such sensations were evoked in trained, blindfolded, seeing control subjects who performed the sensory substitution task equally well. These data show that the perceptual correlate of activity in a given cortical area reflects the characteristics of its novel sensory input source.
Magnetophosphenes are investigated from the viewpoint of electromagnetic dosimetry. Induced current density and internal electric fields at the threshold of perception are estimated by analytical and numerical calculations, assuming different models. Dosimetry for electrophosphenes is also discussed and compared with that for magnetophosphenes. The distribution of current density and internal electric fields is consistent with the experimental observation that flashing sensations reach their greatest intensity at the periphery of the visual field, for both electro and magnetophosphenes. The estimated thresholds in internal electric fields are consistent for magnetophosphenes and for electrophosphenes, respectively. The magnitudes of the thresholds, however, differ by about 10-fold. The thresholds in induced current density are critically dependent on the conductivity of the eye assumed for the calculations. The effect of thin membrane structure is also discussed with regard to the difference between electric field and magnetic field exposures.
The history of magnetophosphenes and their closely related predecessor, electrophosphenes, is described from the mid-18th century to the present time. The current era of magnetic stimulation started in 1985 with the development of a practical capacitor-discharge electromagnetic stimulator by Barker and his colleagues at the University of Sheffield, and their application of it to the brain with Merton and Morton at the National Hospital, London. The safety of magnetostimulation of the brain is discussed as well as the advantages of magnetostimulation over electrostimulation. Principles of magnetostimulation of nerves and magnetic measurement are considered. Effects on motor and sensory systems of the brain are described including magnetic perceptual suppression in the visual cortex and other pioneering work of Amassian, Cracco and Maccabee at SUNY Health, Brooklyn. Magnetophosphenes from retinal and cortical magnetostimulation are distinguished. Now that visual cortical stimulation is possible with the strong magnetic pulses generated by capacitor-discharge instruments, the functional viability of the visual cortex may be tested directly and noninvasively.
BACKGROUND: Electrical stimulation of the visual cortex with surface electrodes is able to elicit basic visual perceptions in blind patients. The development of a visual prosthesis for the blind will require an in-vivo model for the optimization of cortical neurostimulation with multielectrode arrays. METHODS: In anaesthetized cats a bilateral craniotomy was performed and the dura was removed to expose the cerebral cortex. A prototype stimulating electrode array was placed on a gyrus in one hemisphere, and the transcallosal evoked response (TER) to cortical stimulation by this electrode array was recorded at a homologous region in the contralateral hemisphere. RESULTS: The stimulating electrode array elicited TER of short latency (6.9 ms) in the contralateral hemisphere. Bipolar stimulation of adjacent electrodes on the array evoked similar TER regardless of the polarity of stimulation. Electrodes spread apart on the array caused higher amplitude TER than electrodes placed close together. Multielectrode stimulation evoked lower amplitude TER than bipolar stimulation. CONCLUSIONS: This transcallosal model of cortical neurostimulation is a useful method to evaluate electrode arrays and stimulation techniques in the development of a visual prosthesis.
Presently, stimulation of the surface of the brain in order to provide artificial vision or hearing for the blind and deaf is in its infant stages. Those observations which are accumulating now have as their aim the investigation of the feasibility of such prosthetic devices. Whether such devices will ever be of real therapeutic benefit remains uncertain and can only be determined by this type of very labor-intensive, expensive and interdisciplinary investigation. When one considers, on the other hand, that there are between one-quarter and one-half million individuals in the United States and Canada who are profoundly deaf and a similar number who are legally blind, the value of the pursuit of such investigation requires little defense.
Details are given for the design, construction, properties, and performance of a large, highly homogeneous magnet designed to permit whole-body magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy at 4 T. The magnet has an inductance of 1289 H and a stored energy of 33.4 MJ at rated field. The health of a group of 11 volunteers who had varying degrees of exposure to this field was followed over a 12-month period and no change that could be associated with this exposure was detected. A mild level of sensory experiences, apparently associated with motion within the field of the magnet, was reported by some of the volunteers during some of their exposures. A questionnaire regarding sensory effects associated with magnetic resonance scanners and possibly caused by the static magnetic field of these instruments, was given to nine respondents who had experience within both 1.5-T scanners and this 4-T scanner and to another group of 24 respondents who had experience only within 1.5-T scanners. For the sensations of vertigo, nausea, and metallic taste there was statistically significant (p less than 0.05) evidence for a field-dependent effect that was greater at 4 T. In addition, there was evidence for motion-induced magnetophosphenes caused by motion of the eyes within the static field. These results indicate the practicality of experimental whole-body body scanners operating at 4 T and the possibility of mild sensory effects in humans associated with motion within a static magnetic field. The results also indicate the likelihood of a wide margin of safety for the exposure of noncompromised patients to the static fields of conventional magnetic resonance scanners operated at 1.5 to 2 T and below.
Much is known about the pathways from photoreceptors to higher visual areas in the brain. However, how we become aware of what we see or of having seen at all is a problem that has eluded neuroscience. Recordings from macaque V1 during deactivation of MT+/V5 and psychophysical studies of perceptual integration suggest that feedback from secondary visual areas to V1 is necessary for visual awareness. We used transcranial magnetic stimulation to probe the timing and function of feedback from human area MT+/V5 to V1 and found its action to be early and critical for awareness of visual motion.
T1-, T2-, and diffusion-weighted MRI was used to determine whether repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) affects the blood-brain barrier or induces localized brain edema. In 11 healthy individuals, 1,200 to 3,800 stimuli were applied over the visual cortex of one hemisphere in series of 5-, 10-, or 20-Hz stimulus trains. MRI performed 6 minutes to 6 hours after rTMS did not show pathologic changes in conventional MRI sequences, after application of gadolinium diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (Gd-DTPA), or by determining apparent diffusion coefficients.
Artificial vision for the blind may be feasible by interfacing a television camera with electronics stimulating the visual cortex. The status of a major collaborative effort involving the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, the University of Utah, and the University of Western Ontario is reviewed. Results have been very encouraging, although much work remains to be done.
18 young men and 18 women listened to an ambiguous narrative concerning the nocturnal experiences of a young boy and then, after an inventory on hypnotic induction and a dichotic word-listening task, were asked to estimate the prevalence of child abuse or abduction by aliens (a third group served as controls). One week later the subjects were asked to reconstruct the narrative. Scores for suggestibility, estimates of prevalence, the sense of a presence during the first sitting and less cerebral lateralization were loaded on the same factor. Although the three groups did not differ with respect to numbers of literal memories, the groups who were given either one of the two innuendos also included an additional 11% of inferences and paraphrases which were considered erroneous reconstructions of the memory of the narrative.
While sitting alone in complete darkness, 3 participants who had ingested psychotropic concentrations of lysergic acid diethylamide reported diffuse blobs of white, purplish, or greenish-yellow lights as two horseshoe magnets rotated at 0.5 Hz. The experiences were not reported when the magnets were stationary or removed from the apparatus. The estimated peak-to-peak variation in field strength at the distance of perception was between 50 and 500 nanoTesla. An association between these results and possible ergot-induced perceptions of "magnet light" reported during the last century by von Reichenbach (1851) is suggested.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.