Neural correlate of subjective sensory experience gradually builds up across cortical areas

When a sensory stimulus is presented, many cortical areas are activated, but how does the representation of a sensory stimulus evolve in time and across cortical areas during a perceptual judgment? We investigated this question by analyzing the responses from single neurons, recorded in several cortical areas of parietal and frontal lobes, while trained monkeys reported the presence or absence of a mechanical vibration of varying amplitude applied to the skin of one fingertip. Here we show that the strength of the covariations between neuronal activity and perceptual judgments progressively increases across cortical areas as the activity is transmitted from the primary somatosensory cortex to the premotor areas of the frontal lobe. This finding suggests that the neuronal correlates of subjective sensory experience gradually build up across somatosensory areas of the parietal lobe and premotor cortices of the frontal lobe.