Rotating visual spaces induce behavioral biases consistent with recalibrated heading integration in humans

Organisms from flies to mice to humans maintain an internal representation of heading by integrating their movements across time. To avoid compounding errors, this integration must be precisely calibrated. Recent evidence from rodents indicates that this calibration is inherently plastic, as immersion in rotating visual spaces induces a bias in neural heading integration that outlasts that experience. Here, we show that humans also exhibit behavioral biases consistent with recalibrated heading integration under similar circumstances. Leveraging immersive virtual reality, we find that rotating visual spaces biases human heading judgements for up to minutes following the experience. The direction of the bias matches the direction of the rotation, while the magnitude scales with its speed. Trials with more head movement accrue more bias. Visual motion alone is sufficient to induce a bias. These results are consistent with the plastic recalibration of human heading integration by rotating visual spaces, mirroring neural findings in rodents.