Analysis of Relationship Between Visual- and Auditory-Attention and Direction of Body Sway Induced by Neck Dorsal Muscle Stimulation Using Simultaneous Measurement of Attention and Body Sway

Abstract

The direction of body sway induced by neck dorsal muscle stimulation can provide useful insights into roles of sensory information in human postural control. Previous studies suggest the existence of a common brain mechanism to determine the body sway direction in response to the muscle stimulation. However, in those studies, direct evidence has not been obtained because of the limitation of experimental techniques. In this paper, experimental methods were proposed to simultaneously measure attention and body sway direction, aiming at obtaining more direct evidence. Line-motion illusion was employed to estimate visual-attention while binaural separation hearing test was used to estimate auditory-attention. The experimental results indicated that the body sway directions were significantly different in different condition of attention. These results demonstrated that the direction of the attention plays an important role in determining the direction of body sway.