Disentangling the visual, motor and representational effects of vestibular input

Abekawa, N. and Ferrè, Elisa Raffaella and Gallagher, M. and Gomi, H. and Haggard, P. (2018) Disentangling the visual, motor and representational effects of vestibular input. Cortex 104 , pp. 46-57. ISSN 0010-9452.

Abstract

The body midline provides a basic reference for egocentric representation of external space. Clinical observations have suggested that vestibular information underpins egocentric representations. Here we aimed to clarify whether and how vestibular inputs contribute to egocentric representation in healthy volunteers. In a psychophysical task, participants were asked to judge whether visual stimuli were located to the left or to the right of their body midline. Artificial vestibular stimulation was applied to stimulate the vestibular organs. We found that artificial stimulation of the vestibular system biased body midline perception. Importantly, no effect was found on motor effector selection. We also ruled out additional explanations based on allocentric visual representations and on potential indirect effects caused by vestibular-driven movements of the eyes, head and body. Taken together our data suggest that vestibular information contributes to computation of egocentric representations by affecting the internal representation of the body midline.

Metadata

Statistics

DownloadsShow export options

Export as XMLJSONCSV

Activity Overview

6 month trend

112Downloads

6 month trend

92Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

Archive Staff Only (login required)

Edit/View Item