Vestibular Facilitation of Optic Flow Parsing
Vestibular Facilitation of Optic Flow Parsing
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0040264
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发表时间：
2012-07-02
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Angelaki, Dora E.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
MacNeilage, Paul R.;Zhang, Zhou;Angelaki, Dora E.
同时的物体运动和自运动引起视网膜图像运动的复杂模式。为了准确地估计物体运动，大脑必须将这种复杂的视网膜运动解析为自运动和物体运动分量。虽然这个计算问题可以解决，原则上，通过纯粹的视觉机制，视网膜外的信息，在自我运动过程中产生的前庭系统也可能发挥重要作用。在这里，我们调查是否结合前庭和视觉的自我运动信息，提高精度的对象运动估计。受试者被要求区分对象运动的方向，同时自我运动的存在下，描绘的视觉线索单独（即光流）或组合的视觉/前庭刺激。我们报告了一个小的，但显着的改善对象运动辨别阈值与前庭线索。这种改善是最大的偏心航向方向和向前运动可以忽略不计，这一发现可以反映增加相对可靠性的前庭与视觉线索偏心航向方向。总的来说，这些结果是一致的假设，前庭输入可以帮助解析视网膜图像运动到自我运动和对象运动组件。
Simultaneous object motion and self-motion give rise to complex patterns of retinal image motion. In order to estimate object motion accurately, the brain must parse this complex retinal motion into self-motion and object motion components. Although this computational problem can be solved, in principle, through purely visual mechanisms, extra-retinal information that arises from the vestibular system during self-motion may also play an important role. Here we investigate whether combining vestibular and visual self-motion information improves the precision of object motion estimates. Subjects were asked to discriminate the direction of object motion in the presence of simultaneous self-motion, depicted either by visual cues alone (i.e. optic flow) or by combined visual/vestibular stimuli. We report a small but significant improvement in object motion discrimination thresholds with the addition of vestibular cues. This improvement was greatest for eccentric heading directions and negligible for forward movement, a finding that could reflect increased relative reliability of vestibular versus visual cues for eccentric heading directions. Overall, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that vestibular inputs can help parse retinal image motion into self-motion and object motion components.