Causal inference accounts for heading perception in the presence of object motion

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 116; no. 18; pp. 9060 - 9065
• Main Authors: Dokka, Kalpana, Park, Hyeshin, Jansen, Michael, DeAngelis, Gregory C., Angelaki, Dora E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States National Academy of Sciences 30.04.2019
• Subjects: Adult; Animals; Automobile industry; Biological Sciences; Brain; Cues; Female; Healthy Volunteers; Humans; Inference; Judgment - physiology; Judgments; Macaca mulatta; Male; Motion; Motion detection; Motion Perception - physiology; Movement - physiology; Moving object recognition; Orientation - physiology; Perception; Perceptions; Photic Stimulation - methods; Space Perception - physiology; Visual Perception - physiology; optic flow; object motion; multisensory; causal inference; heading
• ISSN: 0027-8424; 1091-6490; 1091-6490
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1820373116

The brain infers our spatial orientation and properties of the world from ambiguous and noisy sensory cues. Judging self-motion (heading) in the presence of independently moving objects poses a challenging inference problem because the image motion of an object could be attributed to movement of the object, self-motion, or some combination of the two. We test whether perception of heading and object motion follows predictions of a normative causal inference framework. In a dual-report task, subjects indicated whether an object appeared stationary or moving in the virtual world, while simultaneously judging their heading. Consistent with causal inference predictions, the proportion of object stationarity reports, as well as the accuracy and precision of heading judgments, depended on the speed of objectmotion. Critically, biases in perceived heading declined when the object was perceived to be moving in the world. Our findings suggest that the brain interprets object motion and self-motion using a causal inference framework.