Abstract
Although the perception of visual motion modulates postural control, it is unknown whether illusory visual motion elicits postural sway. The present study examined the effect of illusory motion on postural sway in patients with migraine, who tend to be sensitive to it. We measured postural sway for both migraine patients and controls while they viewed static visual stimuli with and without illusory motion. The participants’ postural sway was measured when they closed their eyes either immediately after (Experiment 1), or 30 s after (Experiment 2), viewing the stimuli. The patients swayed more than the controls when they closed their eyes immediately after viewing the illusory motion (Experiment 1), and they swayed less than the controls when they closed their eyes 30 s after viewing it (Experiment 2). These results suggest that static visual stimuli with illusory motion can induce postural sway that may last for at least 30 s in patients with migraine.
Highlights
Postural control is modulated by vestibular functioning (Birren, 1945) and by visual stimulation
Multiple comparisons revealed significantly larger rectangular area in the eyes open condition with the gray plane (p < 0.05) and snake image (p < 0.01) than in the without head-mounted display (HMD) condition and a smaller Romberg ratio of total path length with the gray plane, there was no main effect of stimulus type on Romberg ratio (p < 0.01)
No differences in total path length were found between the gray plane and the snake image observations, while the total path length under the without HMD condition increased more than that under the gray plane and snake image eyes open conditions and their Romberg ratios
Summary
Postural control is modulated by vestibular functioning (Birren, 1945) and by visual stimulation. Visual input simulating forward or backward self-motion, such as expanding, or contracting optic flow, elicits postural sway in observers (Lee and Lishman, 1975; van Asten et al, 1988). This visually induced postural modulation occurs even in infants (Lee and Aronson, 1974). The Rotating Snakes (Kitaoka, 2003) is an optimized Fraser–Wilcox illusion that has patterns with stepwise luminance profiles, which induces stronger illusory motion (Kitaoka and Ashida, 2003; See Figure 1A for an example). Recent studies have suggested that the neural basis for the illusory motion induced by Rotating Snakes is found in the human cortical pathway from primary visual cortex to the middle temporal area (Kuriki et al, 2008; Ashida et al, 2012)
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