Effects of Vestibular Rotatory Accelerations on Covert Attentional Orienting in Vision and Touch

Abstract

Abstract& Peripheral vestibular organs feed the central nervous system with inputs favoring the correct perception of space during head and body motion. Applying temporal order judgments (TOJs) to pairs of simultaneous or asynchronous stimuli presented in the left and right egocentric space, we evaluated the influence of leftward and rightward vestibular rotatory accelerations given around the vertical head-body axis on covert attentional orienting. In a first experiment, we presented visual stimuli in the left and right hemifield. In a second experiment, tactile stimuli were presented to hands lying on their anatomical side or in a crossed position across the sagittal body midline. In both experiments, stimuli were presented while normal subjects suppressed or did not suppress the vestibulo-ocular response (VOR) evoked by head-body rotation. Independently of VOR suppression, visual and tactile stimuli presented on the side of rotation were judged to precede simultaneous stimuli presented on the side opposite the rotation. When limbs were crossed, attentional facilitatory effects were only observed for stimuli presented to the right hand lying in the left hemispace during leftward rotatory trials with VOR suppression. This result points to spatiotopic rather than somatotopic influences of vestibular inputs, suggesting that cross-modal effects of these inputs on tactile ones operate on a representation of space that is updated following arm crossing. In a third control experiment, we demonstrated that temporal prioritization of stimuli presented on the side of rotation was not determined by response bias linked to spatial compatibility between the directions of rotation and the directional labels used in TOJs (i.e., ''left'' or ''right'' first). These findings suggest that during passive rotatory head-body accelerations, covert attention is shifted toward the direction of rotation and the direction of the fast phases of the VOR. &

Oscillatory neural responses evoked by natural vestibular stimuli in humans

“…The sources of this vestibular alpha suppression are in line with the temporoparietal vestibular cortex previously identified (Bense et al 2001;Dieterich et al 2003;Hewett et al 2011;Kahane et al 2003;Lobel et al 1998;Lopez and Blanke 2011). Future work should distinguish how the present vestibular alpha oscillations compare to alpha oscillations over parietal regions previously linked to attentional (Haegens et al 2011(Haegens et al , 2012Romei et al 2008;Sauseng et al 2005) and related (i.e., Ferrè et al 2014;Figliozzi et al 2005) processes. Unlike studies of visual and somatosensory attention that showed a lateralization of alpha suppression (Haegens et al 2011(Haegens et al , 2012, we note that there was no significant difference between alpha suppression when comparing the early periods of CW and CCW rotation in study 2 and no lateralized topographies across all studies (Fig.…”

Imagined own-body transformations during passive self-motion

“…Previous studies have suggested that spatial attention is strongly coupled to vestibular mechanisms, such that passive own-body displacements result in an automatic shift of attention in the rotation direction of one's body (Figliozzi, Guariglia, Silvetti, Siegler, & Doricchi, 2005;Karnath & Dieterich, 2006). The MBT task used in the present study had a strong spatial component (i.e., colored hand of the avatar appearing at the left or the right side of the screen).…”

Balancing awareness: Vestibular signals modulate visual consciousness in the absence of awareness

“…Whereas these previous studies tested visual and vestibular integration with respect to self-motion and vestibular influences on the processing of consciously perceived visual information, other studies investigated the effects of vestibular stimulation on visual attention (Figliozzi, Guariglia, Silvetti, Siegler, & Doricchi, 2005), bistable visual states (van Elk & Blanke, 2012), and mental rotation (Grabherr et al, 2011;van Elk & Blanke, 2014). Of relevance for vestibular input to visual awareness, it was shown by van Elk & Blanke that the direction of passive self-motion influences the perceived rotation direction of bistable rotating stimuli (that under stationary conditions have 50% of chance to be perceived to be rotating in either direction).…”