Human postural responses to motion of real and virtual visual environments under different support base conditions

The role of visual orientation cues for human control of upright stance is still not well understood. We, therefore, investigated stance control during motion of a visual scene as stimulus, varying the stimulus parameters and the contribution from other senses (vestibular and leg proprioceptive cues present or absent). Eight normal subjects and three patients with chronic bilateral loss of vestibular function participated. They stood on a motion platform inside a cabin with an optokinetic pattern on its interior walls. The cabin was sinusoidally rotated in anterior–posterior (a–p) direction with the horizontal rotation axis through the ankle joints (f=0.05–0.4 Hz; Amax=0.25°–4°; vmax=0.08–10°/s). The subjects’ centre of mass (COM) angular position was calculated from optoelectronically measured body sway parameters. The platform was either kept stationary or moved by coupling its position 1:1 to a–p hip position (‘body sway referenced’, BSR, platform condition), by which proprioceptive feedback of ankle joint angle became inactivated. The visual stimulus evoked inphase COM excursions (visual responses) in all subjects. (1) In normal subjects on a stationary platform, the visual responses showed saturation with both increasing velocity and displacement of the visual stimulus. The saturation showed up abruptly when visually evoked COM velocity and displacement reached approximately 0.1°/s and 0.1°, respectively. (2) In normal subjects on a BSR platform (proprioceptive feedback disabled), the visual responses showed similar saturation characteristics, but at clearly higher COM velocity and displacement values (≈1°/s and 1°, respectively). (3) In patients on a stationary platform (no vestibular cues), the visual responses were basically similar to those of the normal subjects, apart from somewhat higher gain values and less-pronounced saturation effects. (4) In patients on a BSR platform (no vestibular and proprioceptive cues, presumably only somatosensory graviceptive and visual cues), the visual responses showed an abnormal increase in gain with increasing stimulus frequency in addition to a displacement saturation. On the normal subjects we performed additional experiments in which we varied the gain of the visual response by using a ‘virtual reality’ visual stimulus or by applying small lateral platform tilts. This did not affect the saturation characteristics of the visual response to a considerable degree. We compared the present results to previous psychophysical findings on motion perception, noting similarities of the saturation characteristics in (1) with leg proprioceptive detection thresholds of approximately 0.1°/s and 0.1° and those in (2) with vestibular detection thresholds of 1°/s and 1°, respectively. From the psychophysical data one might hypothesise that a proprioceptive postural mechanism limits the visually evoked body excursions if these excursions exceed 0.1°/s and 0.1° in condition (1) and that a vestibular mechanism is doing so at 1°/s and 1° in (2). To better understand this, we performed computer simulations using a posture control model with multiple sensory feedbacks. We had recently designed the model to describe postural responses to body pull and platform tilt stimuli. Here, we added a visual input and adjusted its gain to fit the simulated data to the experimental data. The saturation characteristics of the visual responses of the normals were well mimicked by the simulations. They were caused by central thresholds of proprioceptive, vestibular and somatosensory signals in the model, which, however, differed from the psychophysical thresholds. Yet, we demonstrate in a theoretical approach that for condition (1) the model can be made monomodal proprioceptive with the psychophysical 0.1°/s and 0.1° thresholds, and for (2) monomodal vestibular with the psychophysical 1°/s and 1° thresholds, and still shows the corresponding saturation characteristics (whereas our original model covers both conditions without adjustments). The model simulations also predicted the almost normal visual responses of patients on a stationary platform and their clearly abnormal responses on a BSR platform.