PLoS ONE: How the Brain Distinguishes between "Up" and "Down"

JANUARY 12, 2021 /--- In a recent study, psychology researchers at York University's School of Health revealed how our brains are handling our direction.
study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, found that a person's understanding of the direction of gravity can be altered by the way their brain responds to visual information.
Harris, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the School of Health, and Meaghan McManus, a graduate student in his lab, found that virtual reality has different levels of impact on the visual environment.
this difference can help us better understand how individuals use visual information to explain their environment and how they react to other tasks. "These findings also help us better understand and predict why astronauts might misjudge the distance they have moved under certain circumstances, especially in space microgravity," said Harris,
( Photo Source: www.pixabay.com).
the virtual reality-based study, the authors asked their participants to lie in an oblique virtual environment so that the vision was "upward" above their heads and out of line with gravity.
they found that participants could be divided into two categories: one group of people who felt they were standing vertically (aligned with the visual scene) even though they were actually lying, and the other who maintained a more realistic idea of lying down.
researchers call the first group "visual orientation illusions vulnerable."
two groups of participants performed simulated self-movements through the environment in the same body posture and in the same scene.
those who were attacked by VRI felt that they were acting faster and farther than those who did not.
Harris added: "VRI vulnerable groups not only rely more on vision to tell them how to direct, but they also find that visual movement is more powerful in evoking the feeling of crossing the scene.
, the brain must constantly determine whether a given acceleration is caused by human motion or gravity.
this decision is due to the fact that we usually move at right angles to gravity.
, however, this distinction becomes more difficult if people's perception of gravity changes, between visual environments or the elimination of gravity.
"When we land people on the moon, Mars or comets or asteroids again, the findings reported in this paper may be helpful because low-gravity environments can cause some people to interpret their self-movement in different ways, with potentially disastrous consequences, " Harris said.
findings may also be helpful to virtual reality game designers, as some virtual environments can cause differences in how players understand and move the game.
may also provide a reference for how aging affects the ability to move around and balance, the researchers said.
(Bioon.com) Source: Whats happens when you brain can't tell what way is up or down? Original source: Meaghan McManus et al, When gravity is not where it should be be: Howed orientations visual self-motion processing, PLOS ONE (2021). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0243381