Intracortical microstimulation of human somatosensory cortex is sufficient to induce perceptual biases.

ABSTRACT

Time-order error, a psychophysical phenomenon in which the duration in between successive stimuli alters perception, has been studied for decades by neuroscientists and psychologists. To date, however, the locus of these effects is unknown. We use intracortical microstimulation of somatosensory cortex in humans as a tool to bypass initial stages of processing and restrict the possible locations that signals could be modified. We find that, using both amplitude discrimination and magnitude estimation paradigms, intracortical microstimulation reliably evoked time-order errors across all participants. Points of subjective equality were symmetrically shifted during amplitude discrimination experiments and the intensity of a successive stimulus was perceived as being more intense when compared to single stimulus trials in magnitude estimation experiments. The error was reduced for both paradigms at longer inter-stimulus intervals. These results show that direct activation of primary somatosensory cortex is sufficient to induce time-order errors.