• Florian Obereisenbuchner, James Dowsett, and TaylorPaul C JPCJDepartment of Neurology, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Germany; German Center for Vertigo and Balance Disorders, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Germany; Department of Psychology, LMU Munich, Germany; Faculty of Philosophy and Philoso.
• MMRS - Munich Medical Research School, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Germany; Faculty of Medicine, LMU Munich, Germany. Electronic address: f.obereisenbuchner@campus.lmu.de.
• Neuroscience. 2021 Aug 21; 470: 37-51.

AbstractAs we move through our environment, our visual system is presented with optic flow, a potentially important cue for perception, navigation and postural control. How does the brain anticipate the optic flow that arises as a consequence of our own movement? Converging evidence suggests that stimuli are processed differently by the brain if occurring as a consequence of self-initiated actions, compared to when externally generated. However, this has mainly been demonstrated with auditory stimuli. It is not clear how this occurs with optic flow. We measured behavioural, neurophysiological and head motion responses of 29 healthy participants to radially expanding, vection-inducing optic flow stimuli, simulating forward transitional motion, which were either initiated by the participant's own button-press ("self-initiated flow") or by the computer ("passive flow"). Self-initiation led to a prominent and left-lateralized inhibition of the flow-evoked posterior event-related alpha desynchronization (ERD), and a stabilisation of postural responses. Neither effect was present in control button-press-only trials, without optic flow. Additionally, self-initiation also produced a large event-related potential (ERP) negativity between 130-170 ms after optic flow onset. Furthermore, participants' visual induced motion sickness (VIMS) and vection intensity ratings correlated positively across the group - although many participants felt vection in the absence of any VIMS, none reported the opposite combination. Finally, we found that the simple act of making a button press leads to a detectable head movement even when using a chin rest. Taken together, our results indicate that the visual system is capable of predicting optic flow when self-initiated, to affect behaviour.Copyright © 2021 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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