Visuo-vestibular conflicts within the roll plane modulate multisensory verticality perception

Abstract

The integration of visuo-vestibular information is crucial when interacting with the external environment. Under normal circumstances, vision and vestibular signals provide corroborating information, for example regarding the direction and speed of self-motion. However, conflicts in visuo-vestibular signalling, such as optic flow presented to a stationary observer, can change subsequent processing in either modality. While previous studies have demonstrated the impact of sensory conflict on unisensory visual or vestibular percepts, here we investigated whether visuo-vestibular conflicts impact sensitivity to multisensory percepts, specifically verticality. Participants were exposed to a visuo-vestibular conflicting or non-conflicting motion adaptor before completing a Vertical Detection Task. Sensitivity to vertical stimuli was reduced following visuo-vestibular conflict. No significant differences in criterion were found. Our findings suggest that visuo-vestibular conflicts not only modulate processing in unimodal channels, but also broader multisensory percepts, which may have implications for higher-level processing dependent on the integration of visual and vestibular signals.