Vestibular-guided visual search

Abstract

The amnesic symptoms that accompany vestibular dysfunction point to a functional relationship between the vestibular and visual memory systems. However, little is known about the underpinning cognitive processes. As a starting point, we sought evidence for a type of cross-modal interaction commonly observed between other sensory modalities in which the identification of a target (in this case, visual) is facilitated if earlier coupled to a unique, temporally coincident stimulus from another sensory domain (in this case, vestibular). Participants first performed a visual detection task in which stimuli appeared at random locations within a computerised grid. Unknown to participants, the onset of one particular stimulus was accompanied by a brief, sub-sensory pulse of galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS). Across two visual search experiments, both old and new targets were identified faster when presented in the grid location at which the GVS-paired visual stimulus had appeared in the earlier detection task. This location advantage appeared to be based on relative rather than absolute spatial co-ordinates since the effect held when the search grid was rotated 90°. Together these findings indicate that when individuals return to a familiar visual scene (here, a 2D grid), visual judgements are facilitated when targets appear at a location previously associated with a unique, task-irrelevant vestibular cue. This novel case of multisensory interplay has broader implications for understanding how vestibular signals inform cognitive processes and helps constrain the growing therapeutic application of GVS.