The development of an implantable human cortical visual prosthesis has been a goal of neuroprosthesis research
for 30 years. During this time, the NIH has funded numerous intramural and extramural studies to advance
fundamental technologies and address biological questions necessary for the design and fabrication of an
implantable system to stimulate the primary visual cortex with intracortical microelectrodes. However,
long-term demonstration of the stability of implanted microelectrodes, the integration of electrodes into
reliable, interconnected multichannel arrays, fabrication of implantable multichannel stimulators, and
fundamental visual science studies researching strategies for neural coding are currently lacking.
Our long-term goal is to develop an implantable system which will provide vision for a large population of persons
with blindness. To accomplish this, a multi-institutional project team is engaged in a program to research
the intra-cortical visual prosthesis. This team includes investigators from 4 institutions, plus consultants
with experience from the NIH, and the Laboratory of Neural Control intramural visual prosthesis project. The
team institutions and personal are organized as follows:
Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL Philip Troyk, Ph. D.,
P.I., Technology/Experimental Design
Michael Davis, Ph. D., Ethics
Vivian Weil, Ph. D., Ethics
Students: Nikhil Jain, Usman Khalid, Rahul Kumar,
Santosh Shah, Keyur Shah
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL David Bradley, Ph. D., Primate Testing, Visual Science
Robert Erickson, M.D., Neurosurgery
Vernon L. Towle, Ph. D., Cortical Imaging/Surgical Design
Students: Josh Berg, Hong Xu, Satish Santhakumar
EIC Laboratories, Inc., Norwood, MA Stuart Cogan, Sc. D., Electrode Electrochemistry and Design
Huntington Medical Research Institute, Pasadena, CA William Agnew, Ph. D., Histological Analysis
Leo Bullara, B.A., Electrode Array Design
Doug McCreery, Ph. D., Electrode Design/Safe Stimulation
NIH Laboratory of Neural Control Affiliated Researchers Martin Bak, B.S., Electrode Design and Fabrication
Conrad Kufta, M.D., Neurosurgery
Edward Schmidt, Ph. D., Neurocontrol/Electrophysiology
Consultants Barry Richmond, M.D., NIH, Visual Science
Edgar Deyoe, Ph.D., Med College of Wisconsin, Visual Science
