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Subjective vertical orientation, eye and body movements, and motion sickness all depend on the way our central nervous system deals with the gravito-inertial force resolution problem: how to discern accelerations due to motion from those due to gravity, despite these accelerations being physically indistinguishable. To control body or eye movements, the accelerations due to motion should be known explicitly. Hence, somehow gravity should be filtered out of the specific force or gravito-inertial acceleration (GIA, the sum of both accelerations) as sensed by the otoliths, which are the linear accelerometers in the inner ear. As the GIA also changes in a head-fixed frame of reference when the head is rotated, angular motion as sensed by the semicircular canals in the inner ear should also be considered. We present here a theoretical approach to this problem, and show that the mathematical description of canal-otolith interaction is in fact a three-dimensional equivalent of the two-dimensional description given by Mayne in 1974. A simple low-pass filter is used to divide the GIA into a motion and a gravity component. The retardation of the somatogravic effect by concomitant angular motion during centrifugation is shown as a result. Furthermore we show how the canal-otolith interaction fits within the framework of an observer model to describe subjective vertical orientation, eye movement and motion sickness characteristics. To predict a frequency peak in sickness severity, for example, it is necessary to explicitly include the Mayne equation operating both on sensor afferents and in the internal model. From tilt and translation data from centrifugation and horizontal oscillation, as well as from motion sickness data, we conclude that the time constant of the low-pass filter is in the order of seconds instead of tens of seconds as assumed before. Several corollaries are additionally discussed as a result.

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A theory is presented supporting a geometrical explanation of physiological height vertigo as a 'distance vertigo' created by visual destabilization of posture when the distance between the observer and visible stationary contrasts becomes critically large. Though height vertigo is generally regarded as a psychopathological process, we hypothesize that it might instead result from an intersensory mismatch when visual information is at variance with vestibular and proprioceptive inputs. Psychophysical experiments confirming the hypothesis revealed that: 1) height vertigo is clearly related to body position, being the greatest in the upright stance; 2) it is the eye-object distance rather than the direction of gaze which is critical; 3) there is a saturation of height vertigo magnitude. Subjective vertigo increases with increasing altitude only below 20 metres. Physiological 'distance vertigo' must be distinguished from psychological 'acrophobia'. Its postural consequences may be ameliorated by strategies gleaned from knowledge of its mechanism such as providing nearby stationary contrasts in the peripheral visual field. A( / ( I O/o/

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On the basis of models of otolith functioning, one would expect that, during sinusoidal linear self-motion in darkness, percepts of body tilt are experienced. However, this is normally not the case, which suggests that the otoliths are not responsive to small deviations from the vertical of the gravito-inertial force vector acting on them. Here we show that this is incorrect. Subjects usually know on what kind of linear motion device they are (going to be) moved, having seen it prior to experimentation. This may result in a cognitive suppression of such otolith responses. In the present study, subjects were kept completely unaware of how they were moved and were asked to report on how they thought they moved. About 50% of the reports included tilt percepts almost immediately. It is concluded that this reveals the presence of otolith responsiveness to even small and short-lived deviations of the gravito-inertial force vector from verticality, a responsiveness which is suppressed when (prior) cognitions exist that the motion path is purely in the horizontal plane.

Advanced driving simulators aim at rendering the motion of a vehicle with maximum fidelity, which requires increased mechanical travel, size, and cost of the system. Motion cueing algorithms reduce the motion envelope by taking advantage of limitations in human motion perception, and the most commonly employed method is just to scale down the physical motion. However, little is known on the effects of motion scaling on motion perception and on actual driving performance. This paper presents the results of a European collaborative project, which explored different motion scale factors in a slalom driving task. Three state-of-the-art simulator systems were used, which were capable of generating displacements of several meters. The results of four comparable driving experiments, which were obtained with a total of 65 participants, indicate a preference for motion scale factors below 1, within a wide range of acceptable values (0.4-0.75). Very reduced or absent motion cues significantly degrade driving performance. Applications of this research are discussed for the design of motion systems and cueing algorithms for driving simulation.