Cortical stimulation consolidates and reactivates visual experience: neural plasticity from magnetic entrainment of visual activity

Abstract

Delivering transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) shortly after the end of a visual stimulus can cause a TMS-induced ‘replay' or ‘visual echo' of the visual percept. In the current study, we find an entrainment effect that after repeated elicitations of TMS-induced replay with the same visual stimulus, the replay can be induced by TMS alone, without the need for the physical visual stimulus. In Experiment 1, we used a subjective rating task to examine the phenomenal aspects of TMS-entrained replays. In Experiment 2, we used an objective masking paradigm to quantitatively validate the phenomenon and to examine the involvement of low-level mechanisms. Results showed that the TMS-entrained replay was not only phenomenally experienced (Exp.1), but also able to hamper letter identification (Exp.2). The findings have implications in several directions: (1) the visual cortical representation and iconic memory, (2) experience-based plasticity in the visual cortex, and (3) their relationship to visual awareness.