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.2014 Sep 18:8:734.
doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00734. eCollection 2014.

Processing of proprioceptive and vestibular body signals and self-transcendence in Ashtanga yoga practitioners

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Processing of proprioceptive and vestibular body signals and self-transcendence in Ashtanga yoga practitioners

Francesca Fiori et al. Front Hum Neurosci..

Abstract

In the rod and frame test (RFT), participants are asked to set a tilted visual linear marker (i.e., a rod), embedded in a square, to the subjective vertical, irrespective of the surrounding frame. People not influenced by the frame tilt are defined as field-independent, while people biased in their rod verticality perception are field-dependent. Performing RFT requires the integration of proprioceptive, vestibular and visual signals with the latter accounting for field-dependency. Studies indicate that motor experts in body-related, balance-improving disciplines tend to be field-independent, i.e., better at verticality perception, suggesting that proprioceptive and vestibular expertise acquired by such exercise may weaken the influence of irrelevant visual signals. What remains unknown is whether the effect of body-related expertise in weighting perceptual information might also be mediated by personality traits, in particular those indexing self-focusing abilities. To explore this issue, we tested field-dependency in a class of body experts, namely yoga practitioners and in non-expert participants. Moreover we explored any link between performance on RFT and self-transcendence (ST), a complex personality construct, which refers to tendency to experience spiritual feelings and ideas. As expected, yoga practitioners (i) were more accurate in assessing the rod's verticality on the RFT, and (ii) expressed significantly higher ST. Interestingly, the performance in these two tests was negatively correlated. More specifically, when asked to provide verticality judgments, highly self-transcendent yoga practitioners were significantly less influenced by a misleading visual context. Our results suggest that being highly self-transcendent may enable yoga practitioners to optimize verticality judgment tasks by relying more on internal (vestibular and proprioceptive) signals coming from their own body, rather than on exteroceptive, visual cues.

Keywords: embodiment; field dependency/independency; rod and frame test; self-transcendence; yoga.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Example of RFT experimental set-up and results.(A) Participants were seated in front of a large fluorescent frame inside a completely darkened room (left panel). The frame was either tilted or vertical. Inside this frame, approximately at the same level as the eyes, there was a tilted rod, which participants had to verbally set to the vertical (i.e., end angle of the rod 0°).(B) Displayed is the median error angle (°), that is the median value of deviation from the gravitational vertical position in the tilted and non-tilted frame condition in both groups. Ashtanga yoga showed significantly smaller deviations of the SVV from the earth vertical when the frame was tilted as compared to novice participants. Furthermore, practitioners and control group, in a with-in comparison, performed better in the upright frame conditions than in the tilted condition. Error bars reflect confidence level at 95%. All tests were two-tailed. Asterisks in the plots indicate significance levels:***p < 0.001.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Personality trait and Rod-and-Frame performance.(A) self-transcendence scores. Ashtanga yoga are significantly more self-transcendent than controls group (error bars reflect s.e.m). Asterisks in the plot indicate significance level,***p < 0.001.(B) “Frame Influence” negatively correlates with scores on ST in Ashtanga yoga, proving that the more they use a proprioceptive style strategy in assessing the SVV (small value in “Frame Influence” index), the more they are self-transcendent.
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