Vision restoration strategies aim to reestablish vision by replacing the function of lost photoreceptors with optoelectronic hardware or through gene therapy. One complication to these approaches is that retinal circuitry undergoes remodeling after photoreceptor loss. Circuit remodeling following perturbation is ubiquitous in the nervous system and understanding these changes is crucial for treating neurodegeneration. Spontaneous oscillations that arise during retinal degeneration have been well-studied, however, other changes in the spatiotemporal processing of evoked and spontaneous activity have received less attention. Here we use subretinal electrical stimulation to measure the spatial and temporal spread of both spontaneous and evoked activity during retinal degeneration. We found that electrical stimulation synchronizes spontaneous oscillatory activity, over space and through time, thus leading to increased correlations in ganglion cell activity. Intriguingly, we found that spatial selectivity was maintained inrd10 retina for evoked responses, with spatial receptive fields comparable towt retina. These findings indicate that different biophysical mechanisms are involved in mediating feed forward excitation, and the lateral spread of spontaneous activity in therd10 retina, lending support toward the possibility of high-resolution vision restoration.

Author NO had an equity interest in Nanovision Biosciences, Inc. and serves on the Scientific Advisory Board. Nanovision Biosciences, Inc. was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this manuscript, or the decision to submit for publication. These studies were supported by a grant from NIH (EY029259 to NO). Although this grant has been identified for conflict-of-interest management based on the overall scope of the project and its potential benefit to Nanovision Biosciences, Inc., the research findings included in this work may not necessarily relate to the interests of Nanovision Biosciences, Inc. The terms of this arrangement have been reviewed and approved by the University of California, San Diego in accordance with its conflict-of-interest policies. The remaining author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

• R01 EY029259/EY/NEI NIH HHS/United States