Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Neurobiol Aging. 2021 Aug;104:71-81. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2021.03.017. Epub 2021 Apr 11.
Aging is associated with a gradual decline in the sensory systems and noisier sensory information. Some research has found that older adults compensate for this with enhanced multisensory integration. However, less is known about how aging influences visual-vestibular integration, an ability that underlies self-motion perception. We examined how visual-vestibular integration changes in participants from across the lifespan (18-79 years old) with a simple reaction time task. Participants were instructed to respond to visual (optic flow) and vestibular (inertial motion) acceleration cues, presented either alone or at a stimulus onset asynchrony. We measured reaction times and computed the violation area relative to the race model inequality as a measure of visual-vestibular integration. Across all ages, the greatest visual-vestibular integration occurred when the vestibular cue was presented first. Age was associated with longer reaction times and a significantly lower detection rate in the vestibular-only condition, a finding that is consistent with an age-related increase in vestibular noise. Although the relationship between age and visual-vestibular integration was positive, the effect size was very small and did not reach statistical significance. Our results suggest that although age is associated with a significant increase in vestibular perceptual threshold, the relative amount of visual-vestibular integration remains largely intact.
衰老是与感觉系统的逐渐衰退和更嘈杂的感觉信息相关联的。一些研究发现，老年人通过增强多感觉整合来对此进行补偿。然而，对于衰老如何影响视觉-前庭整合（一种支撑自我运动感知的能力）知之甚少。我们通过一项简单的反应时间任务，研究了在整个生命周期（18-79 岁）的参与者中视觉-前庭整合是如何变化的。参与者被指示对视觉（光流）和前庭（惯性运动）加速线索做出反应，这些线索单独呈现或在刺激起始异步呈现。我们测量了反应时间，并计算了相对于种族模型不等式的违反面积，作为视觉-前庭整合的度量。在所有年龄段，当前庭线索首先呈现时，视觉-前庭整合最大。年龄与反应时间延长和前庭单独条件下的检测率显著降低有关，这一发现与前庭噪声随年龄增长有关。尽管年龄与视觉-前庭整合之间存在正相关关系，但效应量非常小，没有达到统计学意义。我们的结果表明，尽管年龄与前庭感知阈值的显著增加有关，但视觉-前庭整合的相对量在很大程度上仍然保持完整。
