Information from the vestibular peripheral organs in the inner ear is integrated with several other classes of signals about the body, generated by eyes, muscles and joints. The resulting signals provide a coherent sense of body posture and orientation in surrounding space. In this project, the vestibular organs of healthy volunteers were stimulated noninvasively. Participants made judgements a...

it has been shown recently that loud clicks evoke myogenic potentials in the tonically contracting sternocleidomastoid muscles. studies have suggested that these potentials are of vestibular origin, especially of the saccule and inferior vestibular nerve. a pilot study was undertaken in our hospital to record vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (vemp) for the first time in iran. eighteen heal...

diabetes mellitus type ι is a metabolic disorder that affects multiple systems including the inner ear. patients with diabetes mellitus commonly complain about dizziness, floating sensation, tinnitus and sweating. the aim of this study was to compare vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (vemps) between diabetic patients with or without neuropathy. subjects included 14 patients with diabetes me...

The vestibular system responds to head acceleration by producing compensatory reflexes in the eyes and postural muscles. In this study, we investigated the effect of brief interaural acceleration on the vestibular evoked myogenic potential (VEMP) in 10 normal subjects and 10 patients with bilateral (bVL) or unilateral vestibular loss (uVL). The stimuli were delivered with a handheld minishaker ...

Stimulation of vestibular otolith afferents by fore-aft tilt (pitch) elicits changes in activity of nerves innervating respiratory muscles, including the diaphragm, abdominal muscles, and tongue musculature. To determine the role of ventral respiratory group (VRG) neurons in producing these vestibular-respiratory responses, the activity of VRG neurons was recorded during natural vestibular stim...

The pathophysiology of spontaneous upbeat (UBN) and downbeat (DBN) nystagmus is reviewed in the light of several instructive clinical findings and experimental data. UBN due to pontine lesions could result from damage to the ventral tegmental tract (VTT), originating in the superior vestibular nucleus (SVN), coursing through the ventral pons and transmitting excitatory upward vestibular signals...

The neuroactive peptide calcitonin-gene related peptide (CGRP) is known to act at efferent synapses and their targets in hair cell organs, including the cochlea and lateral line. CGRP is also expressed in vestibular efferent neurons as well as a number of central vestibular neurons. Although CGRP-null (-/-) mice demonstrate a significant reduction in cochlear nerve sound-evoked activity compare...

INTRODUCTION The vestibular evoked myogenic potential is a potential of mean latency that measures the muscle response to auditory stimulation. This potential can be generated from the contraction of the sternocleidomastoid muscle and also from the contraction of extraocular muscles in response to high-intensity sounds. This study presents a combined or simultaneous technique of cervical and oc...

Unexpected support-surface movements delivered during stance elicit "first trial" postural reactions, which are larger and cause greater instability compared with habituated responses. The nature of this first trial reaction remains unknown. We hypothesized that first trial postural reactions consist of a generalized startle reaction, with a similar muscle synergy as the acoustic startle respon...

OBJECTIVES The frequency of pathologically reduced click thresholds for vestibular activation was explored in patients with the Tullio phenomenon (sound induced vestibular activation). METHODS Seven patients (eight affected ears) with symptoms of oscillopsia and unsteadiness in response to loud external sounds or to the patient's own voice were examined. In all but one patient, vestibular hyp...