Multisensory self-motion compensation during object trajectory judgments.
Judging object trajectory during self-motion is a fundamental ability for mobile organisms interacting with their environment. This fundamental ability requires the nervous system to compensate for the visual consequences of self-motion in order to make accurate judgments, but the mechanisms of this compensation are poorly understood. We comprehensively examined both the accuracy and precision of observers' ability to judge object trajectory in the world when self-motion was defined by vestibular, visual, or combined visual-vestibular cues. Without decision feedback, subjects demonstrated no compensation for self-motion that was defined solely by vestibular cues, partial compensation (47%) for visually defined self-motion, and significantly greater compensation (58%) during combined visual-vestibular self-motion. With decision feedback, subjects learned to accurately judge object trajectory in the world, and this generalized to novel self-motion speeds. Across conditions, greater compensation for self-motion was associated with decreased precision of object trajectory judgments, indicating that self-motion compensation comes at the cost of reduced discriminability. Our findings suggest that the brain can flexibly represent object trajectory relative to either the observer or the world, but a world-centered representation comes at the cost of decreased precision due to the inclusion of noisy self-motion signals.
Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Kalpana
K
Dokka
German Center for Vertigo and Balance Disorders, University Hospital of Munich, Munich, Germany and.
Paul R
PR
MacNeilage
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA.
Gregory C
GC
DeAngelis
Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Dora E
DE
Angelaki
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003657:Decision Making; D030141:Feedback, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D009039:Motion Perception; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D013028:Space Perception; D055815:Young Adult
flow parsing; object motion; optic flow; self-motion; vestibular