From virtual images to actions

Most experiments which study the mechanisms by which different senses interact in humans focus on perception. In most natural tasks, however, sensory signals are not ultimately used for perception, but rather for action. The effects of the action are sensed again by the sensory system, so that perception and action are complementary parts of a dynamic control system. To get a better understanding of how different senses interact in self-motion, we study the control of self-motion in a closed perceptionaction loop. Here we investigated how cues from different sensory modalities (visual cues and body cues) are used when humans stabilize a simulated helicopter at a target location.