Falls in seniors are a major public health problem. Falls lead to fear of falling, reduced mobility, and decreased quality of life. Vestibular dysfunction is one of the fall risk factors. The relationship between objective measures of vestibular responses and age has been studied. However, the effects of age on vestibular perception during caloric stimulation have not been studied. Twenty senio...

BACKGROUND Dizziness is the most common symptom in elderly patients and has been identified as a risk factor for falls. While BPPV is the most common cause of dizziness among elderly, multisensory deficits is the second, with visual, vestibular and proprioceptive reduced function. Asymmetric vestibular function is overrepresented in elderly persons with hip fractures and wrist fractures and can...

UNLABELLED There is a natural symbiosis between vergence and vestibular responses. Deficits in vergence can lead to vertigo, disequilibrium, and postural instability. This study examines both vergence eye movements in patients with idiopathic bilateral vestibular loss, and their standing balance in relation to vergence. Eleven patients participated in the study and 16 controls. Bilateral loss o...

The hundredth anniversary of Robert Bárány's Nobel Prize in Medicine offers the opportunity to highlight the importance of his discoveries on the physiology and pathophysiology of the vestibular organs. Bárány developed the method of caloric vestibular stimulation that revolutionized the investigation of the semicircular canals and that is still widely used today. Caloric vestibular stimulation...

BACKGROUND We investigated the prevalence of diabetic autonomic neuropathy (DAN) and vestibular dysfunction (VD) in diabetic patients with peripheral neuropathy. METHODS Thirty-five diabetic patients with peripheral neuropathy were enrolled from August 2008 to July 2009. All subjects underwent autonomic function tests. Nineteen of the patients (54.3%) underwent videonystagmography. RESULTS ...

BACKGROUND Do central mechanisms account for the variability of clinical recovery following peripheral vestibulo-cochlear lesions? OBJECTIVE To investigate structural (morphological) plasticity in the human brain following unilateral vestibulo-cochlear lesions which might contribute to central vestibular compensation. METHODS The authors compared regional grey matter volume (GMV) changes in...

INTRODUCTION Evidence is emerging for a significant clinical and neuroanatomical relationship between balance and anxiety. Research has suggested a potentially priming effect with anxiety symptoms predicting a worsening of balance function in patients with underlying balance dysfunction. We propose to show that a vestibular stimulus is responsible for an increase in state anxiety, and there is ...