Multisensory coding of self-motion and its contribution to navigation.

Abstract

Mobile organisms integrate multimodal self-motion signals - including motor commands, vestibular inputs, optic flow and proprioceptive feedback - to accurately perceive their heading and speed of traversal. These instantaneous cues are processed, via continuous temporal integration and progressive spatial transformations, to facilitate path-integration-based navigation. Recent cutting-edge neurophysiological recordings in animal models have revealed several ubiquitous cross-modal algorithms that contribute to this processing: vestibular-visual convergence to enhance self-motion perception, predictive coding integration to enable optimal dynamic state estimates, landmark-referenced error correction‌ to mitigate path-integration drift and facilitate cognitive spatial map construction, and egocentric-to-allocentric conversion‌ via integration with proprioceptive cues from the eyes, head, body or limbs. Thus, multisensory coding plays an important role in self-motion perception and self-localization during navigational behaviour.