Precision and Intelligence Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2016 May 13;6:25432. doi: 10.1038/srep25432.
Perception of an object's weight is linked to its form and motion. Studies have shown the relationship between weight perception and motion in horizontal and vertical environments to be universally identical across subjects during passive observation. Here we show a contradicting finding in that not all humans share the same motion-weight pairing. A virtual environment where participants control the steepness of a slope was used to investigate the relationship between sliding motion and weight perception. Our findings showed that distinct, albeit subjective, motion-weight relationships in perception could be identified for slope environments. These individualistic perceptions were found when changes in environmental parameters governing motion were introduced, specifically inclination and surface texture. Differences in environmental parameters, combined with individual factors such as experience, affected participants' weight perception. This phenomenon may offer evidence of the central nervous system's ability to choose and combine internal models based on information from the sensory system. The results also point toward the possibility of controlling human perception by presenting strong sensory cues to manipulate the mechanisms managing internal models.
物体重量的感知与其形状和运动有关。研究表明，在被动观察时，水平和垂直环境中重量感知与运动之间的关系在主体间普遍一致。在这里，我们发现了一个相反的发现，并非所有人类都具有相同的运动-重量配对。一个参与者可以控制坡度陡度的虚拟环境被用来研究滑动运动和重量感知之间的关系。我们的研究结果表明，在坡度环境中可以识别出不同的、尽管是主观的运动-重量关系。当引入控制运动的环境参数变化时，会发现这些个性化的感知，具体包括倾斜度和表面纹理。环境参数的差异，加上经验等个体因素，影响了参与者的重量感知。这种现象可能为中枢神经系统根据来自感觉系统的信息选择和组合内部模型的能力提供了证据。研究结果还表明，通过呈现强烈的感觉提示来操纵管理内部模型的机制，有可能控制人类的感知。
