Perceived body position and the visual horizontal

doi:10.1016/0361-9230(96)00132-3

Brain Research Bulletin

Volume 40, Issues 5–6, 1996, Pages 393-397

https://doi.org/10.1016/0361-9230(96)00132-3 Get rights and content

Abstract

This contribution examines the relation between the subjective visual vertical, the subjective visual horizontal, and the perceived body position of human subjects. Firmly fixed on a tiltable chair with head and torso restrained, 11 healthy subjects were rolled sideways and indicated their subjective horizontal body position. In these positions the subjects were also asked to adjust a luminous line alternately to the vertical and to the horizontal. The adjustments of the subjective horizontal body position cluster around a mean of 96.3° with a remarkably broad range (SD: 19.7°). In the subjective horizontal body position, the luminous line does not appear horizontal when in line with one's own spinal axis. It is set further down by 27.4° on average and, therefore, perpendicular to the subjective visual vertical. This finding supports the idea that the judgement of the own body position and the judgement of the orientation of a seen object respective to gravity are based on different references. Contradictory to other investigations [23, 24], is the empirical fact that the individual subjects were not able to adjust the horizontal body position with the reported accuracy (range of mean adjustments 77.5 to 117.6°).

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Cited by (64)

Spatial orientation: Model-based approach to multi-sensory mechanisms
2019, Progress in Brain Research
Citation Excerpt :
At large head tilt angles (> 60°), SVV errors are usually in the same direction of the head tilt, reflecting underestimations of upright orientation relative to the actual head positions (known as the Aubert or A-effect). These systematic errors in spatial orientation do not correspond with the perception of body tilt, which remains fairly accurate at all tilt positions (Bronstein, 1999; Kaptein and Van Gisbergen, 2004; Mast and Jarchow, 1996; Mittelstaedt, 1983; Van Beuzekom et al., 2001; Van Beuzekom and Van Gisbergen, 2000). Such dissociation shows that the spatial orientation is not simply determined by the perception of body position, in line with the multisensory aspect of spatial perception.
Perception of spatial orientation is generated through multimodal sensory integration. In this process, there are systematic errors with changes in the head or body position, which reflect challenges for the brain in maintaining a common sensory reference frame for spatial orientation. Here, we focus on this multisensory aspect of spatial orientation. We review a Bayesian spatial perception model that can be used as a framework to study sensory contributions to spatial orientation during lateral head tilts and probe neural networks involved in this process.
How do visual and postural cues combine for self-tilt perception during slow pitch rotations?
2014, Acta Psychologica
Citation Excerpt :
With regard to the influence of postural cues, numerous studies have investigated how body tilt itself can modify self-orientation perception. However, the findings have been rather contradictory (Bauermeister, 1964; Carriot, Barraud, Nougier, & Cian, 2006; Ceyte, Cian, Nougier, Olivier, & Trousselard, 2007; Ebenholtz, 1970; Fouque et al., 1999; Mast & Jarchow, 1996). For instance, Fouque et al. (1999) found that pitch body tilt induced a substantial bias in the direction of body tilt for estimation of egocentric eye level (i.e., the plane parallel to the transverse plane of the head, called Head Referenced Eye Level; Stoper & Cohen, 1989), while Carriot et al. (2006) did not.
Self-orientation perception relies on the integration of multiple sensory inputs which convey spatially-related visual and postural cues. In the present study, an experimental set-up was used to tilt the body and/or the visual scene to investigate how these postural and visual cues are integrated for self-tilt perception (the subjective sensation of being tilted). Participants were required to repeatedly rate a confidence level for self-tilt perception during slow (0.05°·s^− 1) body and/or visual scene pitch tilts up to 19° relative to vertical. Concurrently, subjects also had to perform arm reaching movements toward a body-fixed target at certain specific angles of tilt. While performance of a concurrent motor task did not influence the main perceptual task, self-tilt detection did vary according to the visuo-postural stimuli. Slow forward or backward tilts of the visual scene alone did not induce a marked sensation of self-tilt contrary to actual body tilt. However, combined body and visual scene tilt influenced self-tilt perception more strongly, although this effect was dependent on the direction of visual scene tilt: only a forward visual scene tilt combined with a forward body tilt facilitated self-tilt detection. In such a case, visual scene tilt did not seem to induce vection but rather may have produced a deviation of the perceived orientation of the longitudinal body axis in the forward direction, which may have lowered the self-tilt detection threshold during actual forward body tilt.
Postural configuration affects the perception of earth-based space during pitch tilt
2011, Acta Psychologica
Citation Excerpt :
Similar interpretation could be given considering the phenomenon of somatosensory adaptation observed after prolonged tilt (Higashiyama & Koga, 1998; Wade, 1970). However, this hypothesis was inconsistent with other studies which found no relationship between the estimated body orientation and the perception of earth-based references (Mast & Jarchow, 1996, Mittelstaedt, 1996; Trousselard, Barraud, Nougier, Raphel, & Cian, 2004). Another interpretation of the relationship observed between body orientation and SVH has been recently suggested in terms of egocentric attraction induced by body tilt (Bringoux et al., 2004, 2008).
This study investigates the relative contribution of body parts in the elaboration of a whole-body egocentric attraction phenomenon previously observed during earth-based judgments. This was addressed through a particular earth-based task requiring estimating the possibility of passing under a projected line, imagining a forward horizontal displacement. Different postural configurations were tested, involving whole-body tilt, trunk tilt alone or head tilt alone. Two legs positions relative to the trunk were manipulated. Results showed systematic deviations of the subjective “passability” toward the tilt, linearly related to the tilt magnitude. For each postural configuration, the egocentric influence appeared to be highly dependent on the position of trunk and head axes, whereas the legs position appeared not relevant. When compared to the whole-body tilt condition, tilting the trunk alone consistently reduced the amount of the deviation toward the tilt, whereas tilting the head alone consistently increased it. Our results suggest that several specific effects from multiple body parts can account for the global deviation of the estimates observed during whole-body tilt. Most importantly, we support that the relative contribution of the body segments could mainly depend on a reweighting process, probably based on the reliability of sensory information available for a particular postural set.
Pitch body orientation influences the perception of self-motion direction induced by optic flow
2010, Neuroscience Letters
We studied the effect of static pitch body tilts on the perception of self-motion direction induced by a visual stimulus. Subjects were seated in front of a screen on which was projected a 3D cluster of moving dots visually simulating a forward motion of the observer with upward or downward directional biases (relative to a true earth horizontal direction). The subjects were tilted at various angles relative to gravity and were asked to estimate the direction of the perceived motion (nose-up, as during take-off or nose-down, as during landing). The data showed that body orientation proportionally affected the amount of error in the reported perceived direction (by 40% of body tilt magnitude in a range of ±20°) and these errors were systematically recorded in the direction of body tilt. As a consequence, a same visual stimulus was differently interpreted depending on body orientation. While the subjects were required to perform the task in a geocentric reference frame (i.e., relative to a gravity-related direction), they were obviously influenced by egocentric references. These results suggest that the perception of self-motion is not elaborated within an exclusive reference frame (either egocentric or geocentric) but rather results from the combined influence of both.
Otolith testing. roll plane disorders
2010, Handbook of Clinical Neurophysiology
Citation Excerpt :
Whenever an asymmetry in vestibular tone is present or central vestibular pathways are disturbed, ocular torsion is frequently present and therefore will influence visual line results differently than values obtained from a somatosensory task. SVV measurements in the roll plane traditionally have been assessed in static conditions, i.e. with the head and the body not moving after the roll displacement (Howard, 1982; Mittelstaedt, 1983; Curthoys, 1996; Mast and Jarchow, 1996; Van Beuzekom and Van Gisbergen, 2000; Kaptein and Van Gisbergen, 2004, 2005), but more recently SVV was also studied under dynamic conditions, i.e. with the head and the body moving (Jaggi-Schwarz and Hess, 2003; Pavlou et al., 2003; Kaptein and Van Gisbergen, 2006). Thereby it has been shown that roll errors tended to be smaller when roll motion was above the threshold of the semicircular canals, indicating a dynamic contribution of the SCC to the perception of vertical.
This chapter discusses that the roll plane of the upright positioned head is oriented earth-vertical and forms a right angle with the sagittal plane. In a comfortable sitting position, Reid's plane, that is the line between the lower rim of the orbita and the center of the external auditory canal, is tilted upward by about 20°. In this position, the roll axis of the head is earthhorizontal and bisects the interaural line, while the roll axes of the eyes are earth-horizontal as well, but passes through the center of the respective ocular globe. It reviews that rotation about the naso-occipital axis is used synonymously to rotation about the roll axis or rotation in the roll plane. Head tilt, on the other hand, is not necessarily restricted to the roll plane, since the head can also be tilted in the pitch plane. The chapter concentrates on head roll with the rotation axis oriented earth-horizontally. Two principal phenomena related to this type of head roll have been studied extensively: The rolling of the eyes in the opposite direction of head roll, called ocular counterroll and the roll-dependent perception of earth-verticality in the absence of visual cues, called subjective vertical. It also discusses the recording techniques, the physiology, and the pathophysiology, including specific disorders of both the phenomena.
Influence of perceived egocentric coordinates on the subjective visual vertical
2009, Neuroscience Letters
The majority of previous studies which have explored the mechanisms underlying perception of the direction of gravity in static roll tilt have proposed that the tendency to estimate the subjective visual vertical (SVV) as tilted towards body tilt (‘Aubert effect’) arises from an underestimation of perceived body tilt. The present study has evaluated an alternative assumption that erroneous estimates of verticality may be related to the ability to estimate the orientation of external objects with respect to the observer's perceived body Z-axis. Experiments showed that Aubert effects and the overestimations of 30–90° angles from the body Z-axis in the roll plane were both related to errors made in adjusting a visual rod parallel to the body Z-axis. The results suggest that errors in providing visual estimates of the observer's own body Z-axis reference are implicated in Aubert effect.

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Perceived body position and the visual horizontal

Abstract

Eine scheinbare bedeutende Drehung von Objeckten bei Neigung des Kopfes nach rechts oder links

Virchows Arch.

Stellungs-, Spannungs- und Lagewahrnehmung

Optic-vestibular orientation to the vertical

Subjective postural vertical in peripheral and vestibular disorders

The subjective visual vertical as a clinical parameter of vestibular function in peripheral vestibular diseases

J. Vestib. Res.

Orthogonalität des subjektiven Wahrnehmungsraumes unter Auschluss visueller Stimuli zur Raumorientierung

A novel automatic procedure for measuring ocular counterrolling: A computeranalytical method to determine the eye's roll angle while subjects work on perceptual tasks

Behav. Res. Methods Instrum. Comput.

Computer aided anatomical reconstruction of the shape and the orientation of human utricular and saccular maculae

Soc. Neurosci. Abstr.

Angular relation of axes in perceptual space