To be able to effectively restore vision by direct cortical stimulation, we need to understand the perceptual events induced by stimulation of high-level visual cortices. We trained macaque monkeys to detect and report optogenetic impulses delivered to their inferior temporal cortices. In a series of experiments, we observed that detection of cortical stimulation highly depends on the choice of images presented to the eyes and that detection of cortical stimulation is most difficult when the animal fixates on a blank screen. We show that local stimulation of object selective parts of the visual cortex induce perceptual events that are easy to detect as object-dependent distortions of the concurrent contents of vision. These findings invite expanding the scope of visual prosthetics beyond the primary visual cortex.