Visual Object Localization through Vestibular and Neck Inputs. 2: Updating Off-Mid-Sagittal-Plane Target Positions

Abstract

The vestibular signal plays a significant role in sensing changes in head orientation during rotations and in determining the magnitude of the rotations, but has only minor contributions in updating the internal representation of object positions with respect to the body after body rotations. The small contribution of the vestibular signal in egocentric object localization was evidenced in experiments in which the subjects reported the remembered position of eccentric earth-fixed targets after passive body rotations. The experiment reported here tested whether motor systems, such as the oculomotor system, make use of vestibular signals to generate accurate goal-directed motor responses toward a target whose position needs to be updated with respect to the body during and after whole-body rotations. The results showed that although subjects can produce saccadic eye movements of about the same magnitude as passive whole-body rotations (as previously reported by a number of researchers), they failed to generate accurate saccades toward the position of an extinguished peripheral visual target after the rotation. Overall, these results combined with those found in the literature suggest different central processes for determining changes in body orientation in complete darkness and for updating a target position with respect to the body during and after body rotations.