Electrical stimulation of the human pulvinar generates visual percepts
- 1Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Abstract
Visual prostheses have targeted early structures in the visual pathway, including the retina, optic nerve, lateral geniculate nucleus, and visual cortex, to generate visual percepts. Stimulation of higher-order visual regions, which may better encode complex visual features, remains relatively unexplored. We tested whether electrical stimulation of the medial and inferior pulvinar elicits visual percepts in a patient with medically refractory epilepsy undergoing invasive seizure monitoring with intracranial electroencephalography. Bipolar stimulation (30 biphasic pulses, 0.5 ms per phase, 3 mA, 1 Hz) was delivered between adjacent pulvinar contacts while eye movements were tracked. Stimulation of different electrode pairs elicited visual percepts at distinct retinotopic locations (p = 0.010). Stimulation also altered cortical activity, producing an early power increase followed by gamma desynchronization in occipital and parietal regions (p < 0.001) and beta desynchronization in the lateral temporal region (p < 0.01). These findings suggest that pulvinar stimulation can generate visual percepts and modulate distributed cortical networks, supporting further investigation of the pulvinar as a target for vision restoration.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{kemballcook2026electrical,
title = {{Electrical stimulation of the human pulvinar generates visual percepts}},
author = {W. S. Kemball-Cook and E. R. Bader and A. D. Boro and E. N. Eskandar and N. J. Killian},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.28.754866},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.28.754866v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Electrical stimulation of the human pulvinar generates visual percepts
AU - W. S. Kemball-Cook
AU - E. R. Bader
AU - A. D. Boro
AU - E. N. Eskandar
AU - N. J. Killian
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/28
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.28.754866
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.28.754866v1
AB - Visual prostheses have targeted early structures in the visual pathway, including the retina, optic nerve, lateral geniculate nucleus, and visual cortex, to generate visual percepts. Stimulation of higher-order visual regions, which may better encode complex visual features, remains relatively unexplored. We tested whether electrical stimulation of the medial and inferior pulvinar elicits visual percepts in a patient with medically refractory epilepsy undergoing invasive seizure monitoring with intracranial electroencephalography. Bipolar stimulation (30 biphasic pulses, 0.5 ms per phase, 3 mA, 1 Hz) was delivered between adjacent pulvinar contacts while eye movements were tracked. Stimulation of different electrode pairs elicited visual percepts at distinct retinotopic locations (p = 0.010). Stimulation also altered cortical activity, producing an early power increase followed by gamma desynchronization in occipital and parietal regions (p < 0.001) and beta desynchronization in the lateral temporal region (p < 0.01). These findings suggest that pulvinar stimulation can generate visual percepts and modulate distributed cortical networks, supporting further investigation of the pulvinar as a target for vision restoration.
ER -