THE FREQUENCY OF CORTICAL MICROSTIMULATION SHAPES ARTIFICIAL TOUCH

AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWIntracortical microstimulation (ICMS) of somatosensory cortex evokes vivid tactile sensations and can be used to convey sensory feedback in brain-controlled bionic hands. Changes in ICMS frequency result in discriminable percepts, but the effects of frequency have only been investigated over a narrow range of low frequencies, spanning only a small fraction of that relevant for neuroprosthetics. Furthermore, the sensory correlates of changes in ICMS frequency remain to be elucidated. To fill these gaps, we trained monkeys to discriminate the frequency of ICMS pulse trains over a wide range of frequencies (from 10 to 400 Hz). ICMS amplitude also varied across stimuli to reduce the animals reliance on magnitude in making frequency judgments. We found that animals could discriminate ICMS frequency up to about 200 Hz but that the sensory correlates of frequency were highly electrode dependent. We discuss the implications of our findings for neural coding and brain-machine interfaces.