Vestibular Cognition: From Sensory Predictions to Mental Imagery

Vestibular cognition has recently gained attention. In this session we will discuss several studies involving vestibular patients that showed that imagined spatial transformations and the processing of real vestibular information share common mechanisms. We suggest that the mechanisms that are in the service of sensory predictions can also operate offline, such that they are drawn upon when people simulate body movements (e.g. during spatial perspective transformations). We will discuss how known vestibular pathways could be involved in offline operations, and how interactions between online sensorimotor processing and offline usage might occur