Determining The Electrical Stimulation Parameters Required To Program The Bionic Eye To Effect Vision.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$458,449.00
Summary
Our eyes are invaluable organs that we use for nearly all daily tasks. Loss of vision is devastating but, unfortunately, little can be done at this time. One strategy to restore vision is through a prosthetic to stimulate the retina. For a prosthetic to work, however, we must first understand how the retina encodes the visual image. Our research seeks to decode the retinal signals and determine how a Bionic Eye could be programmed to mimic them.
Although chronic pain is a serious clinical problem, treatments for its alleviation have largely failed, in part because they have not been tailored to the specific origin of the pain. This proposal focuses on rheumatoid arthritis, a common and incurrable source of chronic pain. This study will investigate how specific changes in spinal cord nerve cells contribute to chronic arthritic pain. The outcomes will help identify new targets to treat chronic pain in rheumatoid arthritis.