Does Changing Vertical Disparity Induce Horizontal Head Movement?

Toru Maekawa; Hirohiko Kaneko

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0137483

Does Changing Vertical Disparity Induce Horizontal Head Movement?

PLoS One. 2015 Sep 10;10(9):e0137483. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0137483. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Toru Maekawa¹, Hirohiko Kaneko²

Affiliations

¹ Center for Information and Neural Networks, National Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Suita, Osaka, Japan; Department of Information Processing, Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan.
² Department of Information Processing, Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan.

Abstract

Theoretically, one can estimate the direction of an object that is relative to the head using vertical disparity if the distance from the head to the object is known. However, several reports describe vertical disparity as having little or no effect on the perception of visual direction. It has been suggested, however, that the visual processes involved in action are different from those involved in perception, and the effect of visual disparity on action has not been investigated in previous studies. This study investigated the influence of vertical disparity on the stability of head direction as a motor response to visual information. We presented a stimulus consisting of horizontal lines with vertical size-disparity oscillation, and examined whether the stimulus affected the subject's head movement. The results showed that the head movement in the condition of vertical size-disparity oscillation was not significantly different from that in the condition of no disparity oscillation. Our results suggest that, despite theoretical validity, vertical disparity is not used for controlling head movement.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Depth Perception / physiology*
Fourier Analysis
Head Movements / physiology*
Humans
Male
Vision Disparity / physiology*

Grants and funding

This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (no. 24500236) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.