Repository logo

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
  1. Home
  2. Academic and Research Output
  3. Journal articles
  4. Visual gravity contributes to subjective first-person perspective
 
research article

Visual gravity contributes to subjective first-person perspective

Pfeiffer, Christian  
•
Grivaz, Petr
•
Herbelin, Bruno  
Show more
2016
Neuroscience of Consciousness

A fundamental component of conscious experience involves a first-person perspective (1PP), characterized by the experience of being a subject and of being directed at the world. Extending earlier work on multisensory perceptual mechanisms of 1PP, we here asked whether the experienced direction of the 1PP (i.e. the spatial direction of subjective experience of the world) depends on visual-tactile-vestibular conflicts, including the direction of gravity. Sixteen healthy subjects in supine position received visuo-tactile synchronous or asynchronous stroking to induce a full-body illusion. In the critical manipulation, we presented gravitational visual object motion directed toward or away from the participant's body and thus congruent or incongruent with respect to the direction of vestibular and somatosensory gravitational cues. The results showed that multisensory gravitational conflict induced within-subject changes of the experienced direction of the 1PP that depended on the direction of visual gravitational cues. Participants experienced more often a downward direction of their 1PP (incongruent with respect to the participant's physical body posture) when visual object motion was directed away rather than towards the participant's body. These downward-directed 1PP experiences positively correlated with measures of elevated self-location. Together, these results show that visual gravitational cues contribute to the experienced direction of the 1PP, defining the subjective location and perspective from where humans experience to perceive the world.

  • Details
  • Metrics
Type
research article
DOI
10.1093/nc/niw006
Web of Science ID

WOS:000386132300008

Author(s)
Pfeiffer, Christian  
Grivaz, Petr
Herbelin, Bruno  
Serino, Andrea  
Blanke, Olaf  
Date Issued

2016

Publisher

Oxford Univ Press

Published in
Neuroscience of Consciousness
Issue

1

Article Number

niw006

Subjects

full-body illusion

•

multisensory integration

•

first-person perspective

•

gravity

•

virtual reality

•

self-consciousness

URL

URL

http://nc.oxfordjournals.org/content/2016/1/niw006.abstract
Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
CNP  
LNCO  
Available on Infoscience
September 13, 2016
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/129318
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  • Contact
  • infoscience@epfl.ch

  • Follow us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Follow us on LinkedIn
  • Follow us on X
  • Follow us on Youtube
AccessibilityLegal noticePrivacy policyCookie settingsEnd User AgreementGet helpFeedback

Infoscience is a service managed and provided by the Library and IT Services of EPFL. © EPFL, tous droits réservés