Is it me or the train moving? Humans resolve sensory conflicts with a nonlinear feedback mechanism in balance control.

IF 4.4 2区 医学 Q1 NEUROSCIENCES
Lorenz Assländer, Matthias Albrecht, Markus Gruber, Robert J Peterka
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Humans use multiple sensory systems to estimate body orientation in space. Sensory contributions change depending on context. A predominant concept for the underlying multisensory integration (MSI) is the linear summation of weighted inputs from individual sensory systems. Changes of sensory contributions are typically attributed to some mechanism explicitly adjusting weighting factors. We provide evidence for a conceptually different mechanism that performs a multisensory correction if the reference of a sensory input moves in space without the need to explicitly change sensory weights. The correction is based on a reconstruction of the sensory reference frame motion (RFM) and automatically corrects erroneous inputs, e.g., when looking at a moving train. The proposed RFM estimator contains a nonlinear dead-zone that blocks corrections at slow velocities. We first demonstrate that this mechanism accounts for the apparent changes in sensory contributions. Secondly, using a balance control model, we show predictions of specific distortions in body sway responses to perturbations caused by this nonlinearity. Experiments measuring sway responses of 24 subjects (13 female, 11 male) to visual scene movements confirmed these predictions. The findings indicate that the central nervous system resolves sensory conflicts by an internal reconstruction of the cause of the conflict. Thus, the mechanism links the concept of causal inference to shifts in sensory contributions, providing a cohesive picture of MSI for the estimation of body orientation in space.Significance statement How the central nervous system (CNS) constructs body orientation in space from multiple sensory inputs is a fundamental question in neuroscience. It is a prerequisite to maintain balance, navigate and interact with the world. To estimate body orientation, the CNS dynamically changes the contribution of individual sensory inputs depending on context and reliability of the cues. However, it is not clear how the CNS achieves these dynamic changes. The findings in our study resolve major aspects of this question. Importantly, the proposed solution using nonlinear multisensory feedback contrasts with traditional approaches assuming context-dependent gain-scaling of individual inputs. Thus, our findings demonstrate how complex, intelligent, and unintuitive behavior can emerge from a comparably simple nonlinear feedback mechanism.

是我的问题还是火车在动?人类通过平衡控制中的非线性反馈机制来解决感官冲突。
人类使用多种感觉系统来估计身体在空间中的方向。感官的贡献因环境而异。潜在的多感觉整合(MSI)的一个主要概念是来自各个感觉系统的加权输入的线性求和。感官贡献的变化通常归因于某种明确调节权重因子的机制。我们为一种概念上不同的机制提供了证据,如果感觉输入的参考在空间中移动而不需要明确改变感觉权重,则执行多感觉校正。这种校正是基于感官参考帧运动(RFM)的重建,并自动校正错误输入,例如,当看到一列移动的火车时。所提出的RFM估计器包含一个非线性死区,该死区阻碍了低速时的修正。我们首先证明了这种机制解释了感官贡献的明显变化。其次,使用平衡控制模型,我们展示了对这种非线性引起的扰动的身体摇摆响应的特定扭曲的预测。实验测量了24名受试者(13名女性,11名男性)对视觉场景运动的摇摆反应,证实了这些预测。研究结果表明,中枢神经系统通过内部重建冲突的原因来解决感觉冲突。因此,该机制将因果推理的概念与感官贡献的变化联系起来,为估计身体在空间中的方向提供了一个连贯的MSI图像。中枢神经系统(CNS)如何从多个感觉输入中构建空间中的身体定向是神经科学的一个基本问题。这是保持平衡、导航和与世界互动的先决条件。为了估计身体方向,中枢神经系统根据环境和线索的可靠性动态地改变个人感觉输入的贡献。然而,目前尚不清楚中枢神经系统是如何实现这些动态变化的。我们的研究结果解决了这个问题的主要方面。重要的是,所提出的解决方案使用非线性多感官反馈,与传统方法假设个体输入的上下文相关增益缩放形成对比。因此,我们的发现证明了复杂、智能和非直觉的行为是如何从一个相对简单的非线性反馈机制中产生的。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Journal of Neuroscience
Journal of Neuroscience 医学-神经科学
CiteScore
9.30
自引率
3.80%
发文量
1164
审稿时长
12 months
期刊介绍: JNeurosci (ISSN 0270-6474) is an official journal of the Society for Neuroscience. It is published weekly by the Society, fifty weeks a year, one volume a year. JNeurosci publishes papers on a broad range of topics of general interest to those working on the nervous system. Authors now have an Open Choice option for their published articles
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