The following is a summary of “Psychophysical evidence for the involvement of head/body-centered reference frames in egocentric visuospatial memory: A whole-body roll tilt paradigm,” published in the January 2023 issue of Ophthalmology by Tani, et al.

A precise memory of an object’s position in relation to one’s own body, known as egocentric visuospatial memory, is necessary for action that is directed at the object. There wasn’t much experimental evidence to support the theory that the brain stores information related to egocentric visuospatial memory not only in the eye-centered reference frame but also in the other egocentric (i.e., head- or body-centered or both) reference frames. For a study, researchers investigated the hypothesis by taking advantage of the perceptual distortion of head/body-centered coordinates caused by a whole-body tilt with respect to gravity. 

The egocentric representation of a target is stored in memory using head/body-centered reference frames, therefore, if this was the case, then reproduction would be impacted by the perceptual distortion. In two experiments, they asked participants to duplicate a visual target’s remembered location about their head or body. They altered the initial (target presentation) and final (reproduction of the remembered location) body orientations in space using intervening whole-body roll rotations, and they assessed the impact on the reproduced location. 

The findings demonstrated considerable biases in the perceived head/body longitudinal axis and replicated target placement in the direction of the intervening body rotation. Importantly, individuals’ levels of inaccuracy were associated. The findings offered experimental proof that information related to egocentric visuospatial memory was encoded and stored by the brain in the head- and body-centered reference frames.

Reference: jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2785306