Abstract
When individuals attempt to walk through the center of a doorway (i.e., spatial bisection), the body’s midpoint at crossing can deviate from its true center. Such deviation could result from asymmetry in spatial cognition. However, previous studies failed to find a significant correlation between bisection performance during walking and that during line/spatial bisection. We investigated whether such failure would result from different effectors being used for bisection (i.e., body midpoint or finger/laser pointer). We also investigated whether the difference in an individual’s eye dominance would affect the relationship. Thirty-two young adults (16 of them with right-eye dominance) participated. For a walking task, participants walked through the perceived center of a wide doorway. For a spatial bisection task, they observed the same doorway under two distance conditions (about 0.5 and 2 m) and aligned their body midpoint with the perceived center in the sagittal dimension. Both tasks were performed under three visual occlusion conditions (dominant eye, non-dominant eye, and no occlusion). The results showed that, for the spatial bisection task, occluding the dominant eye caused deviation of the bisected point to the contralateral side. However, for the walking task, such an effect was observed only in participants with a dominant right eye. Consequently, directional biases in both tasks were significantly correlated only for right-eye-dominant participants. These results suggest that, for right-eye-dominant individuals only, use of the same effector for both tasks showed a clear relationship between the two tasks. Possible explanations for these findings were discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Astafiev SV, Shulman GL, Stanley CM, Snyder AZ, Van Essen DC, Corbetta M (2003) Functional organization of human intraparietal and frontal cortex for attending, looking, and pointing. J Neurosci 23:4689–4699
Bouffard J, Gagne M, Mercier C (2013) Effect of painful and non-painful sensorimotor manipulations on subjective body midline. Front Hum Neurosci 7:77. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2013.00077
Bowers D, Heilman KM (1980) Pseudoneglect: effects of hemispace on a tactile line bisection task. Neuropsychologia 18:491–498
Calvo-Merino B, Glaser DE, Grezes J, Passingham RE, Haggard P (2005) Action observation and acquired motor skills: an fMRI study with expert dancers. Cereb Cortex. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhi007
Castiello U (2003) Understanding other people’s actions: intention and attention. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 29:416–430. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.29.2.416
Ceyte H, Cian C, Nougier V, Olivier I, Roux A (2006) Effects of neck muscles vibration on the perception of the head and trunk midline position. Exp Brain Res 170:136–140. doi:10.1007/s00221-006-0389-7
Chaminade T, Meltzoff AN, Decety J (2005) An fMRI study of imitation: action representation and body schema. Neuropsychologia 43:115–127. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2004.04.026
Decety J, Grezes J, Costes N, Perani D, Jeannerod M, Procyk E, Grassi F, Fazio F (1997) Brain activity during observation of actions. Influence of action content and subject’s strategy. Brain 120(Pt 10):1763–1777
Elliott D, Roy A, Goodman D, Carson R, Chua R, Maraj B (2003) Asymmetries in the preparation and control of manual aiming movements. Can J Exp Psychol 47:570–589
Foxe JJ, McCourt ME, Javitt DC (2003) Right hemisphere control of visuospatial attention: line-bisection judgments evaluated with high-density electrical mapping and source analysis. Neuroimage 19:710–726. doi:10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00057-0
Fujikake H, Higuchi T, Imanaka K, Maloney LT (2011) Directional bias in the body while walking through a doorway: its association with attentional and motor factors. Exp Brain Res 210:195–206. doi:10.1007/s00221-011-2621-3
Gamberini L, Seraglia B, Priftis K (2008) Processing of peripersonal and extrapersonal space using tools: evidence from visual line bisection in real and virtual environments. Neuropsychologia 46:1298–1304. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.12.016
Goodale MA (2011) Transforming vision into action. Vis Res 51:1567–1587. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2010.07.027
Graff-Radford J, Crucian GP, Heilman KM (2006) The right arm likes to be close. Cortex 42:699–704
Hatin B, Sykes Tottenham L, Oriet C (2012) The relationship between collisions and pseudoneglect: Is it right? Cortex 48:997–1008. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2011.05.015
Iacoboni M, Woods RP, Brass M, Bekkering H, Mazziotta JC, Rizzolatti G (1999) Cortical mechanisms of human imitation. Science 286:2526–2528. doi:10.1126/science.286.5449.2526
Jewell G, McCourt ME (2000) Pseudoneglect: a review and meta-analysis of performance factors in line bisection tasks. Neuropsychologia 38:93–110. doi:10.1016/S0028-3932(99)00045-7
Karnath HO (1994) Subjective body orientation in neglect and the interactive contribution of neck muscle proprioception and vestibular stimulation. Brain 117(Pt 5):1001–1012
Longo MR, Lourenco SF (2006) On the nature of near space: effects of tool use and the transition to far space. Neuropsychologia 44:977–981. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2005.09.003
Lourenco SF, Longo MR (2009) The plasticity of near space: evidence for contraction. Cognition 112:451–456. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2009.05.011
Malouin F, Richards CL, Jackson PL, Dumas F, Doyon J (2003) Brain activations during motor imagery of locomotor-related tasks: a PET study. Hum Brain Mapp 19:47–62. doi:10.1002/hbm.10103
Miles WR (1930) Ocular dominance in human adults. J Gen Psychol 3:412–430
Milner AD, Brechmann M, Pagliarini L (1992) To halve and to halve not: an analysis of line bisection judgements in normal subjects. Neuropsychologia 30:515–526
Newport R, Preston C, Pearce R, Holton R (2009) Eye rotation does not contribute to shifts in subjective straight ahead: implications for prism adaptation and neglect. Neuropsychologia 47:2008–2012. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.02.017
Nichelli P, Rinaldi M, Cubelli R (1989) Selective spatial attention and length representation in normal subjects and in patients with unilateral spatial neglect. Brain Cogn 9:57–70
Nicholls ME, Loftus A, Mayer K, Mattingley JB (2007) Things that go bump in the right: the effect of unimanual activity on rightward collisions. Neuropsychologia 45:1122–1126. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.07.015
Nicholls ME, Loftus AM, Orr CA, Barre N (2008) Rightward collisions and their association with pseudoneglect. Brain Cogn 68:166–170. doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2008.04.003
Nicholls ME, Hadgraft NT, Chapman HL, Loftus AM, Robertson J, Bradshaw JL (2010) A hit-and-miss investigation of asymmetries in wheelchair navigation. Atten Percept Psychophys 72:1576–1590. doi:10.3758/APP.72.6.1576
Patla AE, Vickers JN (2003) How far ahead do we look when required to step on specific locations in the travel path during locomotion? Exp Brain Res 148:133–138
Roth HL, Lora AN, Heilman KM (2002) Effects of monocular viewing and eye dominance on spatial attention. Brain 125:2023–2035
Roy EA, Kalbfleisch L, Elliott D (1994) Kinematic analyses of manual asymmetries in visual aiming movements. Brain Cogn 24:289–295. doi:10.1006/brcg.1994.1017
Saj A, Honore J, Richard C, Coello Y, Bernati T, Rousseaux M (2006) Where is the “straight ahead” in spatial neglect? Neurology 67:1500–1503. doi:10.1212/01.wnl.0000239823.28570.87
Saj A, Honore J, Richard C (2010) Reducing rightward bias of subjective straight ahead in neglect patients by changes in body orientation. J Neurosurg Psychiatry 79:991–996
Shumway-Cook A, Woollacott MH (2001) Motor control: theory and practical applications, 2nd edn. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia
Thomas NA, Stuckel D, Gutwin C, Elias LJ (2009) Directional collisions during a route-following task. J Int Neuropsychol Soc 15:225–230. doi:10.1017/S1355617709090328
Turnbull OH, McGeorge P (1998) Lateral bumping: A normal-subject analog to the behaviour of patients with hemispatial neglect? Brain Cogn 37:31–33
Vale A, Scally A, Buckley JG, Elliott DB (2008) The effects of monocular refractive blur on gait parameters when negotiating a raised surface. Ophthalmic Physiol Opt 28:135–142. doi:10.1111/j.1475-1313.2008.00543.x
Warren WHJ, Kay BA, Zosh WD, Duchon AP, Sahuc S (2001) Optic flow is used to control human walking. Nat Neurosci 4:213–216
Weiss PH, Marshall JC, Wunderlich G, Tellmann L, Halligan PW, Freund HJ, Zilles K, Fink GR (2000) Neural consequences of acting in near versus far space: a physiological basis for clinical dissociations. Brain 123:2531–2541
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kitayama, S., Fujikake, H., Kokubu, M. et al. The relationship between spatial cognition and walking trajectory for passing through a doorway: Evident in individuals with dominant right eye?. Exp Brain Res 233, 797–807 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-014-4155-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-014-4155-y