Abstract
We recently published a study of the reconstruction of passively travelled trajectories from optic flow. Perception was prone to illusions in a number of conditions, and was not always veridical in the others. Part of the illusionary reconstructed trajectories could be explained by assuming that subjects base their reconstruction on the ego-motion percept built during the stimulus’ initial moments. In the current paper, we test this hypothesis using a novel paradigm: if the final reconstruction is governed by the initial percept, providing additional, extra-retinal information that modifies the initial percept should predictably alter the final reconstruction. The extra-retinal stimulus was tuned to supplement the information that was under-represented or ambiguous in the optic flow; the subjects were physically displaced or rotated at the onset of the visual stimulus. A highly asymmetric velocity profile (high acceleration, very low deceleration) was used. Subjects were required to guide an input device (in the form of a model vehicle; we measured position and orientation) along the perceived trajectory. We show for the first time that a vestibular stimulus of short duration can influence the perception of a much longer-lasting visual stimulus. Perception of the ego-motion translation component in the visual stimulus was improved by a linear physical displacement, perception of the ego-motion rotation component by a physical rotation. This led to a more veridical reconstruction in some conditions, but to a less veridical reconstruction in other conditions.
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Notes
This deceleration is not sub-threshold, but was the lowest smooth deceleration we could attain, and much weaker than the preceding acceleration.
This information and the vehicle’s representation were of course shown only during the response phases!
NB: we use Ψ to refer to rotation and Φ to refer to orientation. Thus, Φo represents the observer’s orientation at a given point, and Ψo the amount of change in this orientation (“yaw”) relative to the starting point.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank I. Israël, J. McIntyre and an anonymous reviewer for critically reading a previous version of this paper, and the many helpful, constructive comments that ensued. Michel Ehrette created the “vehicle”; France Maloumian most of Fig. 1.
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Bertin, R.J.V., Berthoz, A. Visuo-vestibular interaction in the reconstruction of travelled trajectories. Exp Brain Res 154, 11–21 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-003-1524-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-003-1524-3