Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 116, Issue 18, Pages 9060-9065Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1820373116
Keywords
heading; causal inference; object motion; multisensory; optic flow
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health [R03 DC013987]
- NEI [EY016178, R01 EY022538]
- Simons Foundation for Autism Research Award [396921]
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The brain infers our spatial orientation and properties of the world from ambiguous and noisy sensory cues. Judging self-motion (heading) in the presence of independently moving objects poses a challenging inference problem because the image motion of an object could be attributed to movement of the object, self-motion, or some combination of the two. We test whether perception of heading and object motion follows predictions of a normative causal inference framework. In a dual-report task, subjects indicated whether an object appeared stationary or moving in the virtual world, while simultaneously judging their heading. Consistent with causal inference predictions, the proportion of object stationarity reports, as well as the accuracy and precision of heading judgments, depended on the speed of objectmotion. Critically, biases in perceived heading declined when the object was perceived to be moving in the world. Our findings suggest that the brain interprets object motion and self-motion using a causal inference framework.
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