scholarly journals Semicircular canal biomechanics in health and disease

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (3) ◽  
pp. 732-755 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. D. Rabbitt

The semicircular canals are responsible for sensing angular head motion in three-dimensional space and for providing neural inputs to the central nervous system (CNS) essential for agile mobility, stable vision, and autonomic control of the cardiovascular and other gravity-sensitive systems. Sensation relies on fluid mechanics within the labyrinth to selectively convert angular head acceleration into sensory hair bundle displacements in each of three inner ear sensory organs. Canal afferent neurons encode the direction and time course of head movements over a broad range of movement frequencies and amplitudes. Disorders altering canal mechanics result in pathological inputs to the CNS, often leading to debilitating symptoms. Vestibular disorders and conditions with mechanical substrates include benign paroxysmal positional nystagmus, direction-changing positional nystagmus, alcohol positional nystagmus, caloric nystagmus, Tullio phenomena, and others. Here, the mechanics of angular motion transduction and how it contributes to neural encoding by the semicircular canals is reviewed in both health and disease.

1993 ◽  
Vol 70 (6) ◽  
pp. 2647-2659 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. R. Wylie ◽  
B. J. Frost

1. The complex spike activity of Purkinje cells in the flocculus in response to rotational flowfields was recorded extracellularly in anesthetized pigeons. 2. The optokinetic stimulus was produced by a rotating “planetarium projector.” A light source was placed in the center of a tin cylinder, which was pierced with numerous small holes. A pen motor oscillated the cylinder about its long axis. This apparatus was placed above the bird's head and the resultant rotational flow-field was projected onto screens that surrounded the bird on all four sides. The axis of rotation of the planetarium could be oriented to any position in three-dimensional space. 3. Two types of responses were found: vertical axis (VA; n = 43) neurons responded best to visual rotation about the vertical axis, and H-135i neurons (n = 34) responded best to rotation about a horizontal axis. The preferred orientation of the horizontal axis was at approximately 135 degrees ipsilateral azimuth. VA neurons were excited by rotation about the vertical axis producing forward (temporal to nasal) and backward motion in the ipsilateral and contralateral eyes, respectively, and were inhibited by rotation in the opposite direction. H-135i neurons in the left flocculus were excited by counterclockwise rotation about the 135 degrees ipsilateral horizontal axis and were inhibited by clockwise motion. Thus, the VA and H-135i neurons, respectively, encode visual flowfields resulting from head rotations stimulating the ipsilateral horizontal and ipsilateral anterior semicircular canals. 4. Sixty-seven percent of VA and 80% of H-135i neurons had binocular receptive fields, although for most binocular cells the ipsilateral eye was dominant. Binocular stimulation resulted in a greater depth of modulation than did monocular stimulation of the dominant eye for 69% of the cells. 5. Monocular stimulation of the VA neurons revealed that the best axis for the contralateral eye was tilted back 11 degrees, on average, to the best axis for ipsilateral stimulation. For the H-135i neurons, the best axes for monocular stimulation of the two eyes were approximately the same. 6. By stimulating circumscribed portions of the monocular receptive fields of the H-135i neurons with alternating upward and downward largefield motion, it was revealed that the contralateral receptive fields were bipartite. Upward motion was preferred in the anterior 45 degrees of the contralateral field, and downward motion, was preferred in the central 90 degrees of the contralateral visual field.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)


2015 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate J. Jeffery ◽  
Jonathan J. Wilson ◽  
Giulio Casali ◽  
Robin M. Hayman

Author(s):  
David A. Agard ◽  
Yasushi Hiraoka ◽  
John W. Sedat

In an effort to understand the complex relationship between structure and biological function within the nucleus, we have embarked on a program to examine the three-dimensional structure and organization of Drosophila melanogaster embryonic chromosomes. Our overall goal is to determine how DNA and proteins are organized into complex and highly dynamic structures (chromosomes) and how these chromosomes are arranged in three dimensional space within the cell nucleus. Futher, we hope to be able to correlate structual data with such fundamental biological properties as stage in the mitotic cell cycle, developmental state and transcription at specific gene loci.Towards this end, we have been developing methodologies for the three-dimensional analysis of non-crystalline biological specimens using optical and electron microscopy. We feel that the combination of these two complementary techniques allows an unprecedented look at the structural organization of cellular components ranging in size from 100A to 100 microns.


Author(s):  
K. Urban ◽  
Z. Zhang ◽  
M. Wollgarten ◽  
D. Gratias

Recently dislocations have been observed by electron microscopy in the icosahedral quasicrystalline (IQ) phase of Al65Cu20Fe15. These dislocations exhibit diffraction contrast similar to that known for dislocations in conventional crystals. The contrast becomes extinct for certain diffraction vectors g. In the following the basis of electron diffraction contrast of dislocations in the IQ phase is described. Taking account of the six-dimensional nature of the Burgers vector a “strong” and a “weak” extinction condition are found.Dislocations in quasicrystals canot be described on the basis of simple shear or insertion of a lattice plane only. In order to achieve a complete characterization of these dislocations it is advantageous to make use of the one to one correspondence of the lattice geometry in our three-dimensional space (R3) and that in the six-dimensional reference space (R6) where full periodicity is recovered . Therefore the contrast extinction condition has to be written as gpbp + gobo = 0 (1). The diffraction vector g and the Burgers vector b decompose into two vectors gp, bp and go, bo in, respectively, the physical and the orthogonal three-dimensional sub-spaces of R6.


2004 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
David Leys ◽  
Jaswir Basran ◽  
François Talfournier ◽  
Kamaldeep K. Chohan ◽  
Andrew W. Munro ◽  
...  

TMADH (trimethylamine dehydrogenase) is a complex iron-sulphur flavoprotein that forms a soluble electron-transfer complex with ETF (electron-transferring flavoprotein). The mechanism of electron transfer between TMADH and ETF has been studied using stopped-flow kinetic and mutagenesis methods, and more recently by X-ray crystallography. Potentiometric methods have also been used to identify key residues involved in the stabilization of the flavin radical semiquinone species in ETF. These studies have demonstrated a key role for 'conformational sampling' in the electron-transfer complex, facilitated by two-site contact of ETF with TMADH. Exploration of three-dimensional space in the complex allows the FAD of ETF to find conformations compatible with enhanced electronic coupling with the 4Fe-4S centre of TMADH. This mechanism of electron transfer provides for a more robust and accessible design principle for interprotein electron transfer compared with simpler models that invoke the collision of redox partners followed by electron transfer. The structure of the TMADH-ETF complex confirms the role of key residues in electron transfer and molecular assembly, originally suggested from detailed kinetic studies in wild-type and mutant complexes, and from molecular modelling.


Author(s):  
Leiba Rodman

Quaternions are a number system that has become increasingly useful for representing the rotations of objects in three-dimensional space and has important applications in theoretical and applied mathematics, physics, computer science, and engineering. This is the first book to provide a systematic, accessible, and self-contained exposition of quaternion linear algebra. It features previously unpublished research results with complete proofs and many open problems at various levels, as well as more than 200 exercises to facilitate use by students and instructors. Applications presented in the book include numerical ranges, invariant semidefinite subspaces, differential equations with symmetries, and matrix equations. Designed for researchers and students across a variety of disciplines, the book can be read by anyone with a background in linear algebra, rudimentary complex analysis, and some multivariable calculus. Instructors will find it useful as a complementary text for undergraduate linear algebra courses or as a basis for a graduate course in linear algebra. The open problems can serve as research projects for undergraduates, topics for graduate students, or problems to be tackled by professional research mathematicians. The book is also an invaluable reference tool for researchers in fields where techniques based on quaternion analysis are used.


1997 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 176-178
Author(s):  
Frank O'Brien

The author's population density index ( PDI) model is extended to three-dimensional distributions. A derived formula is presented that allows for the calculation of the lower and upper bounds of density in three-dimensional space for any finite lattice.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jumpei Morimoto ◽  
Yasuhiro Fukuda ◽  
Takumu Watanabe ◽  
Daisuke Kuroda ◽  
Kouhei Tsumoto ◽  
...  

<div> <div> <div> <p>“Peptoids” was proposed, over decades ago, as a term describing analogs of peptides that exhibit better physicochemical and pharmacokinetic properties than peptides. Oligo-(N-substituted glycines) (oligo-NSG) was previously proposed as a peptoid due to its high proteolytic resistance and membrane permeability. However, oligo-NSG is conformationally flexible and is difficult to achieve a defined shape in water. This conformational flexibility is severely limiting biological application of oligo-NSG. Here, we propose oligo-(N-substituted alanines) (oligo-NSA) as a new peptoid that forms a defined shape in water. A synthetic method established in this study enabled the first isolation and conformational study of optically pure oligo-NSA. Computational simulations, crystallographic studies and spectroscopic analysis demonstrated the well-defined extended shape of oligo-NSA realized by backbone steric effects. The new class of peptoid achieves the constrained conformation without any assistance of N-substituents and serves as an ideal scaffold for displaying functional groups in well-defined three-dimensional space, which leads to effective biomolecular recognition. </p> </div> </div> </div>


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