Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Dr Mark EldridgeORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2022. Artificial activation of neurons in early visual areas induces perception of simple visual flashes.1,2 Accordingly, stimulation in high-level visual cortices is expected to induce perception of complex features.3,4 However, results from studies in human patients challenge this expectation. Stimulation rarely induces any detectable visual event, and never a complex one, in human subjects with closed eyes.2 Stimulation of the face-selective cortex in a human patient led to remarkable hallucinations only while the subject was looking at faces.5 In contrast, stimulations of color- and face-selective sites evoke notable hallucinations independent of the object being viewed.6 These anecdotal observations suggest that stimulation of high-level visual cortex can evoke perception of complex visual features, but these effects depend on the availability and content of visual input. In this study, we introduce a novel psychophysical task to systematically investigate characteristics of the perceptual events evoked by optogenetic stimulation of macaque inferior temporal (IT) cortex. We trained macaque monkeys to detect and report optogenetic impulses delivered to their IT cortices7,8,9 while holding fixation on object images. In a series of experiments, we show that detection of cortical stimulation is highly dependent on the choice of images presented to the eyes and it is most difficult when fixating on a blank screen. These findings suggest that optogenetic stimulation of high-level visual cortex results in easily detectable distortions of the concurrent contents of vision.
Author(s): Azadi R, Bohn S, Lopez E, Lafer-Sousa R, Wang K, Eldridge MAG, Afraz A
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Current Biology
Year: 2023
Volume: 33
Issue: 3
Pages: 581-588.e4
Print publication date: 06/02/2023
Online publication date: 06/01/2023
Acceptance date: 08/12/2022
Date deposited: 19/02/2025
ISSN (print): 0960-9822
ISSN (electronic): 1879-0445
Publisher: Cell Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.12.021
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.12.021
Data Access Statement: All the data collected during the experiments from both animals has been deposited at Figshare. DOIs are listed in the key resources table. All original code has been deposited to Zenodo. DOIs are listed in the key resources table. Any additional information required to reanalyze the data reported in this paper is available from the lead contact upon request.
PubMed id: 36610394
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
