Journal
CURRENT BIOLOGY
Volume 15, Issue 18, Pages 1657-1662Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2005.08.009
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Funding
- NEI NIH HHS [R01 EY12814] Funding Source: Medline
- NIDCD NIH HHS [F32 DC006540, R01 DC04260] Funding Source: Medline
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Our inner ear is equipped with a set of linear accelerometers, the otolith organs, that sense the inertial accelerations experienced during self-motion [1, 2]. However, as Einstein pointed out nearly a century ago [3], this signal would by itself be insufficient to detect our real movement, because gravity, another form of linear acceleration, and self-motion are sensed identically by otolith afferents. To deal with this ambiguity, it was proposed that neural populations in the pons and midline cerebellum compute an independent, internal estimate of gravity using signals arising from the vestibular rotation sensors, the semicircular canals [4-7]. This hypothesis, regarding a causal relationship between firing rates and postulated sensory contributions to inertial motion estimation, has been directly tested here by recording neural activities before and after inactivation of the semicircular canals. We show that, unlike cells in normal animals, the gravity component of neural responses was nearly absent in canal-inactivated animals. We conclude that, through integration of temporally matched, multimodal information, neurons derive the mathematical signals predicted by the equations describing the physics of the outside world.
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