Sensory-motor coupling | EPFL Graph Search

Sensory-motor coupling is the coupling or integration of the sensory system and motor system. Sensorimotor integration is not a static process. For a given stimulus, there is no one single motor command. "Neural responses at almost every stage of a sensorimotor pathway are modified at short and long timescales by biophysical and synaptic processes, recurrent and feedback connections, and learning, as well as many other internal and external variables". Overview The integration of the sensory and motor systems allows an animal to take sensory information and use it to make useful motor actions. Additionally, outputs from the motor system can be used to modify the sensory system's response to future stimuli. To be useful it is necessary that sensory-motor integration be a flexible process because the properties of the world and ourselves change over time. Flexible sensorimotor integration would allow an animal the ability to correct for erro

Flight of mind: Sensorimotor and multisensory embodiment with aviation robotics, flight simulator, and virtual reality

Myeong Seop Song

Normally, humans experience an 'I' as residing in one's body and as the agent of one's actions. In other words, the self is experienced as being inside the body (self-location), as having a body (self-identification), and as being able to control the person's body (agency). Over the last decade, research in cognitive neuroscience has revealed that vestibular signals contribute to such aspects of the embodied self. On the other hand, the influences of embodiment on vestibular sensations have received scant attention. In my thesis, I highlight how changes in multisensory and sensorimotor embodiment impact vestibular sensations. For this purpose, I merged technologies from photorealistic virtual reality (VR), aviation robotics such as a drone, flight simulator, haptics with knowledge of cognitive neuroscience about embodiment and bodily self-consciousness (BSC). The multidisciplinary approaches provide new paradigms to modulate embodiment and investigate related vestibular sensations based on multisensory and sensorimotor mechanisms of BSC. Also, the approaches reveal the relationship between embodiment and vestibular sensations. In Study 1, we have objectively shown the possibility of the duplication of the self by measuring peripersonal space (PPS). To this aim, we provided participants with real-time feedback from a drone-mounted camera that autonomously followed them while they responded to multisensory stimuli on their body and in their environment and walked forward. Our results demonstrate that this setup induces two spatially distinct PPSs in healthy participants: reaction times for visuotactile stimuli were faster around both the physical body and the observed body. In Studies 2 & 3, we have added a photorealistic avatar and a haptic vest to a robotic flight simulator to enable and investigate personalized immersive flight experiences in healthy humans. Study 2 showed that modulations of embodiment using sensorimotor stimulation resulted in enhanced subjective flying experience, better piloting performance, and learning. In Study 3, we showed that multisensory - visual and tactile - stimulation could further increase embodiment and improve piloting performance. Furthermore, in both studies, we found a positive relationship between embodiment and flight sensations. In Studies 4 & 5, we developed a new multisensory body scanning technology platform to induce and investigate one of the most common experiences in which the center of awareness is dissociated from the physical body: out-of-body experiences (OBEs). OBEs represent an interesting link between embodiment and vestibular sensations as they are characterized by embodiment of an elevated aerial position and perspective in space that is commonly associated with prominent sensations of floating, elevation, and flight. In this study, we have investigated how several sensorimotor and audio-visual stimulation conditions affect subjective sensations of disembodiment, floating, lightness as well as behavioral measures of self-location. In conclusion, my work developed new paradigms to investigate embodiment, BSC, and vestibular processing. My work revealed the influence of embodiment on vestibular sensations and applied these insights between embodiment and vestibular sensations to the field of field engineering by combining state-of-the-art technologies with knowledge of BSC with broad implications for robotics, neuroscience, of immersive VR, as well as experiential

EPFL2020

Motor control by sensory cortex

Rachel Aronoff, Fred Marbach, Céline Matéo, Ferenc Mátyás, Carl Petersen, Varun Sreenivasan, Catherine Wacongne

Classical studies of mammalian movement control define a prominent role for the primary motor cortex. Investigating the mouse whisker system, we found an additional and equally direct pathway for cortical motor control driven by the primary somatosensory cortex. Whereas activity in primary motor cortex directly evokes exploratory whisker protraction, primary somatosensory cortex directly drives whisker retraction, providing a rapid negative feedback signal for sensorimotor integration. Motor control by sensory cortex suggests the need to reevaluate the functional organization of cortical maps.

2010

Long-range connectivity of mouse primary somatosensory barrel cortex

Rachel Aronoff, Céline Matéo, Ferenc Mátyás, Carl Petersen, Bernard Schneider

The primary somatosensory barrel cortex processes tactile vibrissae information, allowing rodents to actively perceive spatial and textural features of their immediate surroundings. Each whisker on the snout is individually represented in the neocortex by an anatomically identifiable 'barrel' specified by the segregated termination zones of thalamocortical axons of the ventroposterior medial nucleus, which provide the primary sensory input to the neocortex. The sensory information is subsequently processed within local synaptically connected neocortical microcircuits, which have begun to be investigated in quantitative detail. In addition to these local synaptic microcircuits, the excitatory pyramidal neurons of the barrel cortex send and receive long-range glutamatergic axonal projections to and from a wide variety of specific brain regions. Much less is known about these long-range connections and their contribution to sensory processing. Here, we review current knowledge of the long-range axonal input and output of the mouse primary somatosensory barrel cortex. Prominent reciprocal projections are found between primary somatosensory cortex and secondary somatosensory cortex, motor cortex, perirhinal cortex and thalamus. Primary somatosensory barrel cortex also projects strongly to striatum, thalamic reticular nucleus, zona incerta, anterior pretectal nucleus, superior colliculus, pons, red nucleus and spinal trigeminal brain stem nuclei. These long-range connections of the barrel cortex with other specific cortical and subcortical brain regions are likely to play a crucial role in sensorimotor integration, sensory perception and associative learning.

Wiley-Blackwell2010

Flight of mind: Sensorimotor and multisensory embodiment with aviation robotics, flight simulator, and virtual reality

Myeong Seop Song

EPFL2020