Characterizing Retinal Ganglion Cell Responses to Electrical Stimulation

Ramesh, Poornima (2018) Characterizing Retinal Ganglion Cell Responses to Electrical Stimulation. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

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Abstract

In patients suffering from retinal degenerative diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa, the photoreceptor cells in the retina deteriorate. However, the neurons in the diseased retina (retinal ganglion cells { RGCs) remain intact and are able to respond to stimuli. These neurons may be stimulated electrically to potentially restore rudimentary vision to those suffering from retinal degenerative diseases. However, the viability of such an approach would be limited by how reliably RGCs respond to electrical stimuli. Hence, the aim of this project was to develop computational approaches to quantify how variable RGC responses are to electrical stimulation. We used generalized linear models (GLMs) for this analysis. These models were used to assess the degree of nonstationarity, linear stimulus dependence and nonlinear stimulus dependence in the responses of different types of retinal ganglion cells. We show that while most RGCs are highly nonlinear in their responses, a marked fraction of the responses can be explained by assuming a linear dependence on the stimulus. We also found that, contrary to expectation, there were no significant differences in the non-stationarity, linearity or non-linearity between different RGC types.

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