Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas paired a biophysically realistic computational model with rat behavioral data and found that discrimination accuracy falls off exponentially as the neuronal activation volumes evoked by intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) overlap (R² = 0.88). With minimal overlap, an intersection-over-union below 1%, rats averaged 85% accuracy, while IoU above 20% left them near chance. The work, published in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, gives a mechanistic basis for setting electrode spacing in sensory neuroprosthetics.
