Vestibular control of posture deviates from Weber's law in response to electrical vestibular stimulation
- 1Laval University
Abstract
Standing balance relies on the continuous detection of body motion across a wide range of amplitudes and frequencies. According to Weber's law, sensory discrimination should degrade in proportion to stimulus amplitude, yet vestibular self-motion perception deviates from this prediction. Whether this deviation extends to the vestibular control of posture remains unknown. To test this hypothesis, we delivered amplitude-increasing electrical vestibular stimulation (EVS, 0-2 mA) at four frequencies (0.1, 0.2, 0.5, and 1 Hz) to 10 healthy young adults, and quantified balance discrimination thresholds (DTs) from the gain and inter-trial variability of the lateral ground reaction force, using signal detection theory. Balance control DTs increased sublinearly with EVS amplitude at all frequencies, deviating from Weber's law. Both balance-correcting response gain and variability accounted for this deviation: gain decreased more slowly than the strictly inverse relationship that would have alone produced strict adherence to Weber's law, while variability exhibited an initial increase followed by saturation at higher EVS amplitudes, a signal-dependent structure necessary to reproduce the observed DT pattern. EVS frequency modulated the shape of this deviation but affected neither overall DT nor the signal-to-noise ratio of the balance-correcting response, which instead remained similar across frequencies. This study revealed a particular property of postural control discrimination by extending the psychophysical and neural deviations from Weber's law previously reported for vestibular perception. Overall, these results provide a better understanding of the balance control discrimination process and provide potential additional assessment criteria for vestibular impairments.
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BibTeX
@misc{omerani2026vestibular,
title = {{Vestibular control of posture deviates from Weber's law in response to electrical vestibular stimulation}},
author = {A. Omerani and I. Mackrous and J. Carriot and M. Simoneau},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.25.754186},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.25.754186v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Vestibular control of posture deviates from Weber's law in response to electrical vestibular stimulation
AU - A. Omerani
AU - I. Mackrous
AU - J. Carriot
AU - M. Simoneau
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/25
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.25.754186
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.25.754186v1
AB - Standing balance relies on the continuous detection of body motion across a wide range of amplitudes and frequencies. According to Weber's law, sensory discrimination should degrade in proportion to stimulus amplitude, yet vestibular self-motion perception deviates from this prediction. Whether this deviation extends to the vestibular control of posture remains unknown. To test this hypothesis, we delivered amplitude-increasing electrical vestibular stimulation (EVS, 0-2 mA) at four frequencies (0.1, 0.2, 0.5, and 1 Hz) to 10 healthy young adults, and quantified balance discrimination thresholds (DTs) from the gain and inter-trial variability of the lateral ground reaction force, using signal detection theory. Balance control DTs increased sublinearly with EVS amplitude at all frequencies, deviating from Weber's law. Both balance-correcting response gain and variability accounted for this deviation: gain decreased more slowly than the strictly inverse relationship that would have alone produced strict adherence to Weber's law, while variability exhibited an initial increase followed by saturation at higher EVS amplitudes, a signal-dependent structure necessary to reproduce the observed DT pattern. EVS frequency modulated the shape of this deviation but affected neither overall DT nor the signal-to-noise ratio of the balance-correcting response, which instead remained similar across frequencies. This study revealed a particular property of postural control discrimination by extending the psychophysical and neural deviations from Weber's law previously reported for vestibular perception. Overall, these results provide a better understanding of the balance control discrimination process and provide potential additional assessment criteria for vestibular impairments.
ER -