TYPE Original Research PUBLISHED 06 February 2023 DOI 10.3389/fncel.2023.1115703 OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Dao-Qi Zhang, Oakland University, United States REVIEWED BY Feng Pan, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China Ning Tian, The University of Utah, United States *CORRESPONDENCE Maesoon Im maesoon.im@kist.re.kr; maesoon.im@gmail.com SPECIALTY SECTION This article was submitted to Cellular Neurophysiology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience RECEIVED 04 December 2022 ACCEPTED 19 January 2023 PUBLISHED 06 February 2023 CITATION Roh H, Otgondemberel Y, Eom J, Kim D and Im M (2023) Electrically-evoked responses for retinal prostheses are differentially altered depending on ganglion cell types in outer retinal neurodegeneration caused by Crb1 gene mutation. Front. Cell. Neurosci. 17:1115703. doi: 10.3389/fncel.2023.1115703 COPYRIGHT © 2023 Roh, Otgondemberel, Eom, Kim and Im. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Electrically-evoked responses for retinal prostheses are differentially altered depending on ganglion cell types in outer retinal neurodegeneration caused by Crb1 gene mutation Hyeonhee Roh 1,2 , Yanjinsuren Otgondemberel 1 , Jeonghyeon Eom 1,3 , Daniel Kim 1,4 and Maesoon Im 1,5 * 1 Brain Science Institute, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 2 School of Electrical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 3 School of Electrical Engineering, Kookmin University, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 4 Department of Biomedical Sciences, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 5 Division of Bio-Medical Science & Technology, KIST School, University of Science and Technology, Seoul, Republic of Korea Background: Microelectronic prostheses for artificial vision stimulate neurons surviving outer retinal neurodegeneration such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP). Yet, the quality of prosthetic vision substantially varies across subjects, maybe due to different levels of retinal degeneration and/or distinct genotypes. Although the RP genotypes are remarkably diverse, prosthetic studies have primarily used retinal degeneration (rd) 1 and 10 mice, which both have Pde6b gene mutation. Here, we report the electric responses arising in retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) of the rd8 mouse model which has Crb1 mutation. Methods: We first investigated age-dependent histological changes of wild-type (wt), rd8, and rd10 mice retinas by H&E staining. Then, we used cell-attached patch clamping to record spiking responses of ON, OFF and direction selective (DS) types of RGCs to a 4-ms-long electric pulse. The electric responses of rd8 RGCs were analyzed in comparison with those of wt RGCs in terms of individual RGC spiking patterns, populational characteristics, and spiking consistency across trials. Results: In the histological examination, the rd8 mice showed partial retinal foldings, but the outer nuclear layer thicknesses remained comparable to those of the wt mice, indicating the early-stage of RP. Although spiking patterns of each RGC type seemed similar to those of the wt retinas, correlation levels between electric vs. light response features were different across the two mouse models. For example, in comparisons between light vs. electric response magnitudes, ON/OFF RGCs of the rd8 mice showed the same/opposite correlation polarity with those of wt mice, respectively. Also, the electric response spike counts of DS RGCs in the rd8 retinas showed a positive correlation with their direction selectivity indices (r = 0.40), while those of the wt retinas were negatively correlated (r = −0.90). Lastly, the spiking timing consistencies of late responses were largely decreased in both ON and OFF RGCs in the rd8 than the wt retinas, whereas no significant difference was found across DS RGCs of the two models. Conclusion: Our results indicate the electric response features are altered depending on RGC types even from the early-stage RP caused by Crb1 mutation. Given the Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience 01 frontiersin.org