Influence of uninformative visual cues on gravity perception.
The perception of the subjective direction of up (subjective visual zenith, SVZ) is influenced by various sensory cues, such as, vestibular and visual input, and by the idiotropic vector, which acts as prior information about self-orientation with respect to gravity. Here, we tested the influence of a subject-fixed visual cue, which was uninformative with respect to the direction of gravity, on SVZ settings in different pitch angles. Our results show that in most subjects the SVZ was influenced by the gravity-unrelated visual cue in a way suggesting that the cue's orientation was memorized in the first trial and used thereafter as reference.
Kupferberg
Aleksandra
A
Institute for Clinical Neurosciences, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany. Alexandra.Kupferberg@gmx.de
Glasauer
Stefan
S
Stein
Alexandra
A
Brandt
Thomas
T
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006112:Gravitation; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011601:Psychophysics; D014796:Visual Perception