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Neuronal correlates of subjective sensory experience

Abstract

When a near-threshold stimulus is presented, a sensory percept may or may not be produced. The unpredictable outcome of such perceptual judgment is believed to be determined by the activity of neurons in early sensory cortex. We analyzed the responses of neurons in primary somatosensory cortex, recorded while monkeys judged the presence or absence of threshold stimuli. We found that these responses did not covary with the monkeys' perceptual reports. In contrast, the activity of frontal lobe neurons did covary with trial-by-trial judgments. Further control and microstimulation experiments indicated that frontal lobe neurons are closely related to the monkeys' subjective experiences during sensory detection.

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Figure 1: Detection task.
Figure 2: Activity of S1 neurons during the detection task.
Figure 3: Activity of MPC neurons during the detection task.
Figure 4: Sensory versus motor activity.
Figure 5: Detection curves during microstimulation experiments.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Hernández, L. Lemus, Y. Vazquez and R. Luna for technical assistance and C. Brody, J. Gold, J. Maunsell, E. Salinas, E. Seidemann and M. Shadlen for comments. R.R. was supported by an International Scholars Award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and by grants from the Dirección General del Personal Académico de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología.

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Correspondence to Ranulfo Romo.

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de Lafuente, V., Romo, R. Neuronal correlates of subjective sensory experience. Nat Neurosci 8, 1698–1703 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1587

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