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Nematic liquid crystals exhibit nanosecond electro-optic response to an applied electric field which modifies the degree of orientational order without realigning the molecular orientation. However, this nanosecond electrically-modified order parameter (NEMOP) effect requires high driving fields, on the order of 108 V/m for a modest birefringence change of 0.01. In this work, we demonstrate that a nematic phase of the recently discovered ferroelectric nematic materials exhibits a robust and fast electro-optic response. Namely, a relatively weak field of 2×107 V/m changes the birefringence by ≈ 0.04 with field-on and -off times around 1 μs. This microsecond electrically modified order parameter (MEMOP) effect shows a greatly improved figure of merit when compared to other electro-optical switching modes in liquid crystals, including the conventional Frederiks effect, and has a potential for applications in fast electro-optical devices such as phase modulators, optical shutters, displays, and beam steerers.