The oculogyral illusion: retinal and oculomotor factors

The cost of aiming for the best answers: Inconsistent perception

The laws of physics and mathematics describe the world we live in as internally consistent. As these rules provide a very effective description, and our interaction with the world is also very effective, it seems self-evident that our perception follows these laws. As a result, when trying to explain imperfections in perception, we tend to impose consistency and introduce concepts such as deformations of visual space. In this review, we provide numerous examples that show that in many situations we perceive related attributes to have inconsistent values. We discuss how our tendency to assume consistency leads to erroneous conclusions on how we process sensory information. We propose that perception is not about creating a consistent internal representation of the outside world, but about answering specific questions about the outside world. As the information used to answer a question is specific for that question, this naturally leads to inconsistencies in perception and to an apparent dissociation between some perceptual judgments and related actions.

Self-Motion Versus Environmental-Motion Perception Following Rotational Vestibular Stimulation and Factors Modifying Them

Motion perception following rotational vestibular stimulation is described either as a self-motion or as an environmental-motion. The purpose of the present study was to establish frequency of occurrence of both sensations in healthy humans; what other sensations they experience and how factors insinuation and visual cues modify them. Twenty-four healthy subjects were rotated with constant velocity of 80°/s in four combinations of opened and closed eyes during the rotation and after a sudden stop. After the cessation of the rotation they reported their spontaneous or insinuated illusory motion. During spontaneous perception after sudden cessation of rotation and with the subject's eyes open, the illusory sensations of self- and environmental-motion were almost equally presented. There was no simultaneous illusory perception of self-motion and environmental-motion. Insinuation modified the perception of motion; presence or absence of visual cues prior to the cessation of the rotation and the presence or absence of visual cues immediately after the cessation of the rotation changed the motion sensation. There is a gender effect in motion perception. This finding might be of benefit in further exploring the gender difference in the susceptibility to motion sickness.

Learning dynamic control of body yaw orientation

To investigate the role of gravitational cues in the learning of a dynamic balancing task, we placed blindfolded subjects in a device programmed with inverted pendulum dynamics about the yaw axis. Subjects used a joystick to try and maintain a stable orientation at the direction of balance during 20 100 s-long trials. They pressed a trigger button on the joystick to indicate whenever they felt at the direction of balance. Three groups of ten subjects each participated. One group balanced with their body and the yaw axis vertical, and thus did not have gravitational cues to help them to determine their angular position. They showed minimal learning, inaccurate indications of the direction of balance, and a characteristic pattern of positional drifting away from the balance point. A second group balanced with the yaw axis pitched 45° from the gravitational vertical and had gravity relevant position cues. The third group balanced with their yaw axis horizontal where they had gravity-dependent cues about body position in yaw. Groups 2 and 3 showed better initial balancing performance and more learning across trials than Group 1. These results indicate that in the absence of vision, the integration of transient semicircular canal and somatosensory signals about angular acceleration is insufficient for determining angular position during dynamic balancing; direct position-dependent gravity cues are necessary.

Treatment of vestibular disorders with weak asymmetric base-in prisms: An hypothesis with a focus on Ménière's disease

BACKGROUND:

Regular treatments of Ménière’s disease (MD) vary largely, and no single satisfactory treatment exists. A complementary treatment popular among Dutch and Belgian patients involves eyeglasses with weak asymmetric base-in prisms, with a perceived high success rate. An explanatory mechanism is, however, lacking.

OBJECTIVE:

To speculate on a working mechanism explaining an effectiveness of weak asymmetric base-in prims in MD, based on available knowledge.

METHODS:

After describing the way these prisms are prescribed using a walking test and its effect reported on, we give an explanation of its underlying mechanism, based on the literature.

RESULTS:

The presumed effect can be explained by considering the typical star-like walking pattern in MD, induced by a drifting after-image comparable to the oculogyral illusion. Weak asymmetric base-in prisms can furthermore eliminate the conflict between a net vestibular angular velocity bias in the efferent signal controlling the VOR, and a net re-afferent ocular signal.

CONCLUSIONS:

The positive findings with these glasses reported on, the fact that the treatment itself is simple, low-cost, and socially acceptable, and the fact that an explanation is at hand, speak in favour of elaborating further on this treatment.

Eye Movements in Darkness Modulate Self-Motion Perception

During self-motion, humans typically move the eyes to maintain fixation on the stationary environment around them. These eye movements could in principle be used to estimate self-motion, but their impact on perception is unknown. We had participants judge self-motion during different eye-movement conditions in the absence of full-field optic flow. In a two-alternative forced choice task, participants indicated whether the second of two successive passive lateral whole-body translations was longer or shorter than the first. This task was used in two experiments. In the first (n = 8), eye movements were constrained differently in the two translation intervals by presenting either a world-fixed or body-fixed fixation point or no fixation point at all (allowing free gaze). Results show that perceived translations were shorter with a body-fixed than a world-fixed fixation point. A linear model indicated that eye-movement signals received a weight of ∼25% for the self-motion percept. This model was independently validated in the trials without a fixation point (free gaze). In the second experiment (n = 10), gaze was free during both translation intervals. Results show that the translation with the larger eye-movement excursion was judged more often to be larger than chance, based on an oculomotor choice probability analysis. We conclude that eye-movement signals influence self-motion perception, even in the absence of visual stimulation.

Aging and Sensory Substitution in a Virtual Navigation Task

Virtual environments are becoming ubiquitous, and used in a variety of contexts–from entertainment to training and rehabilitation. Recently, technology for making them more accessible to blind or visually impaired users has been developed, by using sound to represent visual information. The ability of older individuals to interpret these cues has not yet been studied. In this experiment, we studied the effects of age and sensory modality (visual or auditory) on navigation through a virtual maze. We added a layer of complexity by conducting the experiment in a rotating room, in order to test the effect of the spatial bias induced by the rotation on performance. Results from 29 participants showed that with the auditory cues, it took participants a longer time to complete the mazes, they took a longer path length through the maze, they paused more, and had more collisions with the walls, compared to navigation with the visual cues. The older group took a longer time to complete the mazes, they paused more, and had more collisions with the walls, compared to the younger group. There was no effect of room rotation on the performance, nor were there any significant interactions among age, feedback modality and room rotation. We conclude that there is a decline in performance with age, and that while navigation with auditory cues is possible even at an old age, it presents more challenges than visual navigation.

Thresholds for self-motion perception in roll without and with visual fixation target--the visualvestibular interaction effect

The purpose of this study was to establish the selfmotion perception threshold, in roll, in the visualvestibular interaction (VVI) state, creating an oculogyral illusion, and to compare this threshold to the self-motion perception threshold in darkness. A further aim was to investigate the dynamics of the threshold at a low frequency range (0.1-1 Hz) of sinusoidal rotation. Seven healthy subjects were tested. A motion platform was used to generate motion. Single cycles of sinusoidal acceleration at four frequencies (0.1, 0.2, 0.5 and 1 Hz) were used as motion stimuli. To avoid otolith stimulation, subjects were rotated about a vertical axis in supine position. To evoke an oculogyral illusion subjects were instructed to fixate their gaze on a cross-shaped object aligned with their head, which rotated with them. The results show a lowering of the self-motion perception threshold in the VVI state, significant for the frequencies 0.1 and 0.2 Hz (p<0.05). In all the subjects, visual fixation on the cross evoked an oculogyral illusion. The threshold in both tested conditions was frequency dependent: it decreased with increasing frequency values. However, this effect was consistently stronger in darkness across all frequencies (p<0.05). In conclusion, the application of sinusoidal rotation during roll at low frequencies in the VVI condition evokes oculogyral illusion. This interaction lowers the self-motion perception threshold compared to that measured during rotation in darkness. This testing method could be of practical benefit in clinical application for revealing brain dysfunction involving integrative mechanisms of perception.

Improving spatial updating accuracy in absence of external feedback

Updating the position of an earth-fixed target during whole-body rotation seems to rely on cognitive processes such as the utilization of external feedback. According to perceptual learning models, improvement in performance can also occur without external feedback. The aim of this study was to assess spatial updating improvement in the absence and in the presence of external feedback. While being rotated counterclockwise (CCW), participants had to predict when their body midline had crossed the position of a memorized target. Four experimental conditions were tested: (1) Pre-test: the target was presented 30° in the CCW direction from participant's midline. (2) Practice: the target was located 45° in the CCW direction from participant's midline. One group received external feedback about their spatial accuracy (Mackrous and Simoneau, 2014) while the other group did not. (3) Transfer T(30)CCW: the target was presented 30° in the CCW direction to evaluate whether improvement in performance, during practice, generalized to other target eccentricity. (4) Transfer T(30)CW: the target was presented 30° in the clockwise (CW) direction and participants were rotated CW. This transfer condition evaluated whether improvement in performance generalized to the untrained rotation direction. With practice, performance improved in the absence of external feedback (p=0.004). Nonetheless, larger improvement occurred when external feedback was provided (ps=0.002). During T(30)CCW, performance remained better for the feedback than the no-feedback group (p=0.005). However, no group difference was observed for the untrained direction (p=0.22). We demonstrated that spatial updating improved without external feedback but less than when external feedback was given. These observations are explained by a mixture of calibration processes and supervised vestibular learning.

Flash induced afterimage versus single spot visual object influence on visual-vestibular interaction in detection threshold for self-motion perception

In seven healthy subjects we studied the effect of flash induced afterimage on perceptual threshold for self-motion during sinusoidal vertical axis rotation compared to rotation in darkness, and rotation with subject's gaze fixed on a 'real' visual object rotated with him. For a real object we used light-emitting diode (LED) aligned with subject's head. A MOOG motion platform was used to generate motion. Single cycles of sinusoidal acceleration at four frequencies: 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, and 1Hz were used as motion stimuli. The results show that the threshold when subjects stare at an afterimage during rotation is consistently lower compared to rotation in darkness. However, compared to the threshold during rotation with a 'real' object visual fixation it is higher, significantly at frequencies 0.5 and 0.2Hz (p<0.05). The threshold is frequency dependent - it decreases with increase of the frequency (p<0.01). The probable mechanism of afterimage influence on perceptual threshold for self-motion is discussed.

Direction specific biases in human visual and vestibular heading perception

Heading direction is determined from visual and vestibular cues. Both sensory modalities have been shown to have better direction discrimination for headings near straight ahead. Previous studies of visual heading estimation have not used the full range of stimuli, and vestibular heading estimation has not previously been reported. The current experiments measure human heading estimation in the horizontal plane to vestibular, visual, and spoken stimuli. The vestibular and visual tasks involved 16 cm of platform or visual motion. The spoken stimulus was a voice command speaking a heading angle. All conditions demonstrated direction dependent biases in perceived headings such that biases increased with headings further from the fore-aft axis. The bias was larger with the visual stimulus when compared with the vestibular stimulus in all 10 subjects. For the visual and vestibular tasks precision was best for headings near fore-aft. The spoken headings had the least bias, and the variation in precision was less dependent on direction. In a separate experiment when headings were limited to ±45°, the biases were much less, demonstrating the range of headings influences perception. There was a strong and highly significant correlation between the bias curves for visual and spoken stimuli in every subject. The correlation between visual-vestibular and vestibular-spoken biases were weaker but remained significant. The observed biases in both visual and vestibular heading perception qualitatively resembled predictions of a recent population vector decoder model (Gu et al., 2010) based on the known distribution of neuronal sensitivities.

Visuo-vestibular interaction: predicting the position of a visual target during passive body rotation

Following body rotation, optimal updating of the position of a memorized target is attained when retinal error is perceived and corrective saccade is performed. Thus, it appears that these processes may enable the calibration of the vestibular system by facilitating the sharing of information between both reference frames. Here, it is assessed whether having sensory information regarding body rotation in the target reference frame could enhance an individual's learning rate to predict the position of an earth-fixed target. During rotation, participants had to respond when they felt their body midline had crossed the position of the target and received knowledge of result. During practice blocks, for two groups, visual cues were displayed in the same reference frame of the target, whereas a third group relied on vestibular information (vestibular-only group) to predict the location of the target. Participants, unaware of the role of the visual cues (visual cues group), learned to predict the location of the target and spatial error decreased from 16.2 to 2.0°, reflecting a learning rate of 34.08 trials (determined from fitting a falling exponential model). In contrast, the group aware of the role of the visual cues (explicit visual cues group) showed a faster learning rate (i.e. 2.66 trials) but similar final spatial error 2.9°. For the vestibular-only group, similar accuracy was achieved (final spatial error of 2.3°), but their learning rate was much slower (i.e. 43.29 trials). Transferring to the Post-test (no visual cues and no knowledge of result) increased the spatial error of the explicit visual cues group (9.5°), but it did not change the performance of the vestibular group (1.2°). Overall, these results imply that cognition assists the brain in processing the sensory information within the target reference frame.