Neuroprosthetics is a relatively new discipline at the boundaries of neuroscience and biomedical engineering, which aims at developing itnplantable devices to restore neural function. The most popular and clinically successful neuroprosthesis to date is the cochlear implant, a device that can restore hearing by stimulating the human auditory nerve directly, by bypassing damaged hair cells in the cochlea. Visual prostheses, on the other hand, are still in the preliminary phase of development, although substantial progress has been made in the last few years. This kind of implantable device is designed to micro-electrically stimulate nerves in the visual system, based on an image from an external camera. These impulses are then propagated to the visual cortex, which is able to process the information and generate a "pixelated" image. The resulting impression does not have the same quality as natural vision, but it is still useful for performing basic perceptual and motor tasks, such as identifying an object or navigating a room. An example of this approach is the Boston Retinal Implant Project, a large collaborative effort that includes, among others, the Harvard Medical School and MIT.
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Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Milan, Milan, Italy and Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab, Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy;
