Abstract
Retinal prostheses can restore partial vision to patients blinded by outer retinal degeneration. The Argus II retinal prosthesis system, used in this study, includes a 10 x 6 electrode array implanted epiretinally, a tiny video camera mounted on a pair of glasses, and a wearable computer that processes the video and determines the stimulation current of each electrode in real time. This study investigates the possibility of using the retinal prosthesis to stimulate visual braille as a sensory substitution for reading written letters and words. Single letters were stimulated in an alternative forced choice (AFC) paradigm, and short 2-4-letter words were stimulated in an open-choice reading paradigm. The subject correctly identified 89% of single letters and 70% of all presented words. This work suggests that text can successfully be stimulated and read as visual braille in retinal prosthesis patients.
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Lauritzen, T.Z. et al. (2014). Reading Visual Braille with a Retinal Prosthesis. In: Guger, C., Allison, B., Leuthardt, E. (eds) Brain-Computer Interface Research. Biosystems & Biorobotics, vol 6. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54707-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54707-2_4
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