BACKGROUND Brain stimulation, both invasive and non-invasive, is increasingly being used to modulate mood and other aspects of subjective experience in various neuropsychiatric conditions. Because this enterprise is deeply dependent on first-person reports provided by patients, sham stimulation is routinely employed to control for demand characteristics and placebo effects. However, a general empirical assessment of the fidelity of this control is missing. OBJECTIVE To provide an empirical exploration of the fidelity of first-person reports following intracranial electrical stimulation (iES) in neurosurgical patients. METHODS We assessed Type I (false positive) error rate following 159 sham stimulations administered to 44 adult epilepsy patients implanted with intracranial electrodes and undergoing iES as part of routine clinical procedures at the Stanford Medical Center. RESULTS The majority of our patients (75%) never committed a single Type I error, and 93% of our sham stimulations (n = 148) yielded true negative reports. False positives were restricted to only 11 patients, and no patient committed more than a single Type I error, even after multiple sham stimulations. CONCLUSION Neurosurgical patients are highly resilient to Type I errors following sham intracranial brain stimulation. Our findings support the validity of prior research exploring first-person experiences elicited by electrical stimulation of the human brain. More broadly, our data are relevant to emerging efforts to use brain stimulation to modulate mood and other aspects of human subjective experience.

中文翻译：

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人脑颅内神经调节后第一人称报告的保真度：对神经外科患者假刺激的经验评估

背景技术脑刺激，无论是侵入性的还是非侵入性的，越来越多地用于调节情绪和各种神经精神疾病中主观体验的其他方面。由于该企业严重依赖患者提供的第一人称报告，因此通常采用假刺激来控制需求特征和安慰剂效应。但是，缺少对这种控制保真度的一般经验评估。目的 对神经外科患者颅内电刺激 (iES) 后第一人称报告的保真度进行实证探索。方法 我们评估了对 44 名植入颅内电极并接受 iES 的成年癫痫患者进行 159 次假刺激后的 I 类（假阳性）错误率，作为斯坦福医学中心常规临床程序的一部分。结果 我们的大多数患者 (75%) 从未犯过一个单一的 I 型错误，我们 93% 的假刺激 (n = 148) 产生了真正的阴性报告。假阳性仅限于 11 名患者，即使在多次假刺激后，也没有患者犯过一个以上的 I 型错误。结论 神经外科患者对假颅内脑刺激后的 I 型错误具有高度弹性。我们的研究结果支持先前探索由人脑电刺激引起的第一人称体验的研究的有效性。更广泛地，