Alcohol Consumption Enhances Vection

Abstract

We assessed changes in forward vection following alcohol consumption, and found that alcohol consumption enhanced vection. This result indicates that alcohol can affect psychophysical processes responsible for self-motion perception.

Wearing Heavy Iron Clogs Can Inhibit Vection

“…This result further suggests that the imposed burdens could cause the impact of the visual inputs in the integration process to be temporally reduced, thus inducing weaker vection perception. We previously revealed that vection can be enhanced by alcohol consumption (Seno and Nakamura, 2013); we speculated that the impact of visual inputs on the process of multimodal integration might be temporally increased because alcohol may reduce the validity, effectiveness, and reliability of the vestibular and bodily inputs for the integration. These kinds of modulation and changes in the integration process could be caused by the imposing burdens.…”

“…More recently, other factors for modulating vection strength have been examined. For example, vection has been found to be modulated by the social environment (Seno, 2013a), music (Seno, 2013b), stimulus meanings (Seno and Fukuda, 2012), attention deprivation (Seno et al,201 la), degree of hunger (Seno et al, 2012b), and alcohol consumption (Seno and Nakamura, 2013).…”

Vection Is Unaffected by Circadian Rhythms

“…For example, Sasaki et al (2012) reported that upward vection could be enhanced by positive sounds (e.g., the sound of a baby laughing). Additionally, physical burdens (e.g., wearing heavy iron clogs) have been found to inhibit vection (Seno, Abe, & Kiyokawa, 2013) while alcohol consumption can facilitate vection (Seno & Nakamura, 2013). Vection also varies depending on age (Shirai, Seno, & Morohashi, 2013;Shirai et al, 2014;Haibach, Slobounov, & Newell, 2009).…”

Illusory Self-Motion (Vection) May Be Inhibited by Hypobaric Hypoxia

“…Additionally, vection is facilitated by increases in arousal levels. For example, high-tempo music ( 26 ) and alcohol consumption ( 27 ) have been shown to facilitate vection strength. In fact, vection has been shown to induce increased pupil size ( 11 ).…”