Off-Vertical Body Orientation Delays the Perceived Onset of Visual Motion

The integration of vestibular, visual and body cues is a fundamental process in the perception of self-motion and is commonly experienced in an upright posture. However, when the body is tilted in an off-vertical orientation these signals are no longer aligned relative to the influence of gravity. In this study, the perceived timing of visual motion was examined in the presence of sensory conflict introduced by manipulating the orientation of the body, generating a mismatch between body and vestibular cues due to gravity and creating an ambiguous vestibular signal of either head tilt or translation. In a series of temporal-order judgment tasks, participants reported the perceived onset of a visual scene simulating rotation around the yaw axis presented in virtual reality with a paired auditory tone while in an upright, supine and side-recumbent body position. The results revealed that the perceived onset of visual motion was further delayed from zero (i.e., true simultaneity between visual onset and a reference auditory tone) by approximately an additional 30 ms when viewed in a supine or side-recumbent orientation compared to an upright posture. There were also no significant differences in the timing estimates of the visual motion between all the non-upright orientations. This indicates that the perceived timing of visual motion is negatively impacted by the presence of conflict in the vestibular and body signals due to the direction of gravity and body orientation, even when the mismatch is not in the direct plane of the axis of rotation.