Auditory perception is influenced by the orientation of the trunk relative to a sound source

Occhigrossi, Chiara; Brosch, Michael; Giommetti, Giorgia; Panichi, Roberto; Ricci, Giampietro; Ferraresi, Aldo; Roscini, Mauro; Pettorossi, Vito Enrico; Faralli, Mario

doi:10.1007/s00221-021-06047-2

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…They complement the previous findings by showing what happens in a less structured context. The bias identified in head-pointing tasks was shown to be a function of headon-trunk eccentricity (Makous and Middlebrooks, 1990;Lewald et al, 2000;Occhigrossi et al, 2021). Instead, in our task, the relative position between participant's seat and sound source is continuously updated (participants "sit" on the virtual arrow, which advances in the virtual space at fixed speed).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…Data collected with forced coordination were compared to those collected with free coordination to evaluate the ability of early blind individuals and sighted controls to localize dynamic sounds by head-pointing while self-immobilizing their trunk on both kinematics and spatial performance standpoints. The distinction between central and lateral direction levels was maintained in the analysis to assess behavioral differences between frontal and eccentric targets, as previously found for auditory localization by head-pointing (Lewald et al, 2000;Occhigrossi et al, 2021). Results are reviewed separately for each measure.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The comparison between trial blocks with targets in front of participants (central) versus those with targets to the side (lateral) provides another point of discussion in light of the literature on egocentric auditory localization. Past studies on the typical population have highlighted, using different methods, some kind of spatial performance drop when targets were placed at eccentric positions concerning the participants' straight-ahead and when the head was turned (Makous and Middlebrooks, 1990;Lewald et al, 2000;Occhigrossi et al, 2021). Most of these studies identified a stimulus eccentricity underestimation bias, that is, accuracy loss.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the lateral level, the target is positioned at 15 • from the participant's straight-ahead, randomly alternated between rightward and leftward, and the starting position of the arrow is 0 • (the participant starts with head and trunk aligned to the straight-ahead direction). The distinction between central and lateral targets was implemented because previous research on auditory localization in the horizontal plane by head-pointing showed better spatial performance in frontal than in eccentric stimuli (Makous and Middlebrooks, 1990;Lewald et al, 2000;Occhigrossi et al, 2021). By doing so, we aimed at evaluating possible differences in motor behavior that could explain those findings.…”

Section: Tasks Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Early Blindness Limits the Head-Trunk Coordination Development for Horizontal Reorientation

Esposito

Bollini

Gori

2021

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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During locomotion, goal-directed orientation movements in the horizontal plane require a high degree of head-trunk coordination. This coordination is acquired during childhood. Since early visual loss is linked to motor control deficits, we hypothesize that it may also affect the development of head-trunk coordination for horizontal rotations. However, no direct evidence exists about such a deficit. To assess this hypothesis, we tested early blind and sighted individuals on dynamic sound alignment through a head-pointing task with sounds delivered in acoustic virtual reality. Participants could perform the head-pointing with no constraints, or they were asked to immobilize their trunk voluntarily. Kinematics of head and trunk were assessed individually and with respect to each other, together with spatial task performance. Results indicated a head-trunk coordination deficit in the early blind group; yet, they could dampen their trunk movements so as not to let their coordination deficit affect spatial performance. This result highlights the role of vision in the development of head-trunk coordination for goal-directed horizontal rotations. It also calls for clarification on the impact of the blindness-related head-trunk coordination deficit on the performance of more complex tasks akin to daily life activities such as steering during locomotion or reaching to targets placed sideways.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tasks Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Early Blindness Limits the Head-Trunk Coordination Development for Horizontal Reorientation

Esposito

Bollini

Gori

2021

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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show abstract

“…The participant starts with their head and trunk aligned to the straight-ahead direction. We distinguished between central and lateral targets because previous research on auditory localization in the horizontal plane by head-pointing showed different spatial performance in eccentric stimuli between sighted and blind people (Lewald et al, 2000;Makous and Middlebrooks, 1990;Occhigrossi et al, 2021).…”

Section: Tasks Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extensive Audio-motor Experience Can Calibrate The Egocentric Space In Early Blindness

Esposito¹,

Bollini²,

Gori³

2021

Preprint

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Combining and integrating cues from different sensory channels is fundamental in developing a spatial representation of the environment. In the sighted population, the visual channel is essential in the spatial representation calibration; indeed, blind individuals show some impairments. One may compensate the vision loss to some degree by exploiting the associations between a movement and the consequent change in perceived auditory scene, known as audio-motor contingencies. The compensation extent is unclear, but evidence suggests that it depends on the amount of both visual and motor experience.To quantify the extent of audio-motor compensation in relation to motor and audio-motor experience, we tested the spatial representation skills of a long-experienced early blind 5-a-side football player. We focused on auditory localization performance and sensitivity to an audio-motor contingency alteration. The study compared the player to groups of early blind (audio-motor experience without specific training) and sighted blindfolded people. We also tested an additional early blind individual without extensive audio-motor experience but who lost vision at an older age than the player, to control the effect of early visual experience alone.Participants were tested on a set of steering tasks in auditory virtual reality (VR). In such tasks, participants would rotate a flying arrow towards an acoustic target. Rotations of the head or trunk controlled the arrow trajectory. Additionally, in some conditions, the relationship between movement and change of acoustic perceptual scene was altered to expose the participants’ sensitivity to the audio-motor contingency alteration.The early blind player performance was analyzed with classical univariate single-case statistics and a multivariate support vector machine classifier. Univariate analyses suggested that the early blind player’s trunk motion is early blind-like. However, the multivariate classifier interpreted his overall performance as that of a sighted individual. The multivariate classifier labelled the visually experienced early blind's overall performance as early blind-like. We concluded that extensive audio-motor experience could compensate for early vision loss for what concerns the sensitivity to audio-motor contingency alterations. These results support the idea that adapted sports for visually impaired people are useful to improve their spatial representation and, consequently, their quality of life.

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Induction and Cancellation of Self-Motion Misperception by Asymmetric Rotation in the Light

et al. 2023

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Asymmetrical sinusoidal whole-body rotation sequences with half-cycles at different velocities induce self-motion misperception. This is due to an adaptive process of the vestibular system that progressively reduces the perception of slow motion and increases that of fast motion. It was found that perceptual responses were conditioned by four previous cycles of asymmetric rotation in the dark, as the perception of self-motion during slow and fast rotations remained altered for several minutes. Surprisingly, this conditioned misperception remained even when asymmetric stimulation was performed in the light, a state in which vision completely cancels out the perceptual error. This suggests that vision is unable to cancel the misadaptation in the vestibular system but corrects it downstream in the central perceptual processing. Interestingly, the internal vestibular perceptual misperception can be cancelled by a sequence of asymmetric rotations with fast/slow half-cycles in a direction opposite to that of the conditioning asymmetric rotations.

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Auditory perception is influenced by the orientation of the trunk relative to a sound source

Cited by 4 publications

References 63 publications

Early Blindness Limits the Head-Trunk Coordination Development for Horizontal Reorientation

Early Blindness Limits the Head-Trunk Coordination Development for Horizontal Reorientation

Extensive Audio-motor Experience Can Calibrate The Egocentric Space In Early Blindness

Induction and Cancellation of Self-Motion Misperception by Asymmetric Rotation in the Light

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