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Differential effects of vestibular processing on orienting exogenous and endogenous covert visual attention

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Abstract

Recent research highlights the overwhelming role of vestibular information for higher order cognition. Central to body perception, vestibular cues provide information about self-location in space, self-motion versus object motion, and modulate the perception of space. Surprisingly, however, little research has dealt with how vestibular information combines with other senses to orient one’s attention in space. Here we used passive whole body rotations as exogenous (Experiment 1) or endogenous (Experiment 2) attentional cues and studied their effects on orienting visual attention in a classical Posner paradigm. We show that—when employed as an exogenous stimulus—rotation impacts attention orienting only immediately after vestibular stimulation onset. However, when acting as an endogenous stimulus, vestibular stimulation provides a robust benefit to target detection throughout the rotation profile. Our data also demonstrate that vestibular stimulation boosts attentional processing more generally, independent of rotation direction, associated with a general improvement in performance. These data provide evidence for distinct effects of vestibular processing on endogenous and exogenous attention as well as alertness that differ with respect to the temporal dynamics of the motion profile. These data reveal that attentional spatial processing and spatial body perception as manipulated through vestibular stimulation share important brain mechanisms.

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Notes

  1. It is possible that other cognitive processes in addition to (or instead of) attention account for the results in some of these tasks. Such processes could involve the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC effect) (Hartmann et al. 2012a) and the effect of stimulation on spatial reference frames (Ferrè et al. 2013; Fink et al. 2003).

  2. It should be noted that the Simon effect can be rather transient and disappear after stimulus–response delays exceeding 350 ms (Jong et al. 1994). In our paradigm, however, vestibular stimulation is still present at every cue-to-target delay, so a Simon effect could still occur.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by EU FP7 project VERE WP1, Grant agreement number 257695, the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Bertarelli foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Neuroprosthetics, Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, School of Life Science, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Mariia Kaliuzhna, Steve Berger & Olaf Blanke

  2. Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Science, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Mariia Kaliuzhna, Andrea Serino, Steve Berger & Olaf Blanke

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Andrea Serino

  4. Department of Neurology, University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland

    Olaf Blanke

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  1. Mariia Kaliuzhna
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  2. Andrea Serino
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  3. Steve Berger
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  4. Olaf Blanke
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Correspondence to Olaf Blanke.

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Kaliuzhna, M., Serino, A., Berger, S. et al. Differential effects of vestibular processing on orienting exogenous and endogenous covert visual attention. Exp Brain Res 237, 401–410 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-018-5403-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-018-5403-3

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