Publications by Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi

POLYRETINA restores light responses in vivo in blind Gottingen minipigs

Charles-Henri Puncho Jérôme Vila, Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi, Paola Vagni, Elodie Geneviève Zollinger, Golnaz Sherafatipour

Retinal prostheses hold potential for artificial vision in blind people. Here, authors show that POLYRETINA, a large and high-density photovoltaic epiretinal device, restores light-evoked cortical responses in blind Gottingen minipigs at safe irradiance le ...

Nature Portfolio2022

Conformable neural interface based on off-stoichiometry thiol-ene-epoxy thermosets

Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi, Eleonora Borda, Danashi Imani Medagoda, Elodie Geneviève Zollinger

Off-stoichiometry thiol-ene-epoxy (OSTE+) thermosets show low permeability to gases and little absorption of dissolved molecules, allow direct low-temperature dry bonding without surface treatments, have a low Young's modulus, and can be manufactured via U ...

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2022

Three-dimensional multilayer concentric bipolar electrodes restrict spatial activation in optic nerve stimulation

Vivien Gaillet, Ricardo Camilo Moreira, Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi, Eleonora Borda, Elodie Geneviève Zollinger

Objective. Intraneural nerve interfaces often operate in a monopolar configuration with a common and distant ground electrode. This configuration leads to a wide spreading of the electric field. Therefore, this approach is suboptimal for intraneural nerve ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2022

Three-dimensional concentric bipolar electrodes for high resolution optic nerve stimulation

Vivien Gaillet, Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi, Eleonora Borda

ASSOC RESEARCH VISION OPHTHALMOLOGY INC2021

Photovoltaic retinal prosthesis restores high-resolution responses to single-pixel stimulation in blind retinas

Naïg Aurelia Ludmilla Chenais, Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi

Retinal prostheses hold the promise of restoring vision in totally blind people. However, a decade of clinical trials highlighted quantitative limitations hampering the possibility of reaching this goal. A key challenge in retinal stimulation is to indepen ...

2021

Epiretinal photovoltaic prosthesis with high pixel density

Naïg Aurelia Ludmilla Chenais, Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi

ASSOC RESEARCH VISION OPHTHALMOLOGY INC2021

Naturalistic spatiotemporal modulation of epiretinal stimulation increases the response persistence of retinal ganglion cell

Naïg Aurelia Ludmilla Chenais, Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi

Objective. Retinal stimulation in blind patients evokes the sensation of discrete points of light called phosphenes, which allows them to perform visually guided tasks, such as orientation, navigation, object recognition, object manipulation and reading. H ...

2021

Organic electronics for neuroprosthetics

Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi

2020

Development of a new visual prosthesis for preclinical studies on artificial vision

Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi

The technological evolution in materials science and microengineering favored the production of advanced visual prostheses useful for fighting blindness and to improve patients quality of life. Visual prostheses aim at replacing lost visual functions by ar ...

EPFL2020

Photovoltaic organic interface for neuronal stimulation in the near-infrared

Naïg Aurelia Ludmilla Chenais, Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi, Laura Ferlauto, Elodie Geneviève Zollinger

Organic materials, such as conjugated polymers, are attractive building blocks for bioelectronic interfaces. In particular, organic semiconductors show excellent performance in light-mediated excitation and silencing of neuronal cells and tissues. However, ...

2020

Capacitive-like photovoltaic epiretinal stimulation enhances and narrows the network-mediated activity of retinal ganglion cells by recruiting the lateral inhibitory network

Naïg Aurelia Ludmilla Chenais, Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi

Photovoltaic retinal prostheses theoretically offer the possibility of a standalone high-resolution electrical stimulation of the retina. However, achieving focused epiretinal stimulation is particularly challenging, because of axonal activation and electr ...

2019

Design and validation of a foldable and photovoltaic wide-field epiretinal prosthesis

Kevin Sivula, Naïg Aurelia Ludmilla Chenais, Samuel Charles Antoine Gilliéron, Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi, Michele Bevilacqua, Paola Vagni, Laura Ferlauto

Retinal prostheses have been developed to fight blindness in people affected by outer retinal layer dystrophies. To date, few hundred patients have received a retinal implant. Inspired by intraocular lenses, we have designed a foldable and photovoltaic wid ...

Nature Research2018

Development and Characterization of PEDOT:PSS/Alginate Soft Microelectrodes for Application in Neuroprosthetics

Marc Olivier Heuschkel, Flavio Maurizio Mor, Estelle Annick Cuttaz, Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi, Paola Vagni, Laura Ferlauto

Reducing the mechanical mismatch between the stiffness of a neural implant and the softness of the neural tissue is still an open challenge in neuroprosthetics. The emergence of conductive hydrogels in the last few years has considerably widened the spectr ...

2018

Implantable electrode and method for manufacturing

Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi

The invention relates to a method for manufacturing an electrode, preferably an implantable electrode array comprising the following steps: Applying (101) a layer of electrically conducting material (4) above a substrate material (1) for forming the electr ...

2018

Multilayer 3D electrodes for neural implants

Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi, Paola Vagni

Objective. In many applications, multielectrode arrays employed as neural implants require a high density and a high number of electrodes to precisely record and stimulate the activity of the nervous system while preserving the overall size of the array as ...

2018

Polymer-based optoelectronic interface and methods for its manufacture

Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi, Diego Ghezzi, Laura Ferlauto

A polymer-based optoelectronic interface comprises an elastomeric substrate (10) and a plurality of discrete photovoltaic pixel elements (20) disposed on top of the substrate. Each pixel element comprises at least one active layer comprising a semiconducti ...

2018