Cue-weighting is affected by the history of cue relations across trials

This study assessed the relative contributions of visual (optic flow) and proprioceptive/efferent copy information to self-motion perception using virtual reality. Subjects wore a head-mounted display and rode a stationary bike along a straight path in an empty, seemingly infinite hallway with random surface texture. Subjects traversed a standard distance and a comparison distance and judged which of the two was longer. The relation between visual and proprioceptive cues was made incongruent by changing the optic flow gain (OFG). Results indicate that relative cue-weighting was affected by the frequency with which the cue-relations were varied. Specifically, an approximately equal weighting of cues was observed for low OFG variability, whereas a visually dominated response was observed for high OFG variability. This suggests that a dynamic re-weighting of cues occurs in response to the recent history of cue-relations. These findings support and expand upon currently proposed models of optimal cue-integrati on