scholarly journals The Neural Basis of Skull Vibration Induced Nystagmus (SVIN)

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-566
Author(s):  
Ian S. Curthoys

I list a summary of the major clinical observations of SVIN in patients with total unilateral vestibular loss (TUVL) and show how basic results from neurophysiology can explain these clinical observations. The account integrates results from single neuron recordings of identified semicircular canal and otolith afferent neurons in guinea pigs in response to low frequency skull vibration with evidence of the eye movement response in cats to selective semicircular canal stimulation (both individual and combined) and a simple model of nystagmus generation to show how these results explain most of the major characteristics of SVIN.

Author(s):  
Julie Mapes Lindholm ◽  
Paul A. Wetzel ◽  
Timothy M. Askins

2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (01) ◽  
pp. 025-037 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Carle ◽  
Søren Laugesen ◽  
Claus Nielsen

In a clinical experiment, it was found that there is a high correlation between the compliance measured by tympanometry and the minimum size of the earmold vent, which just solves the client's occlusion problem related to his/her own voice when using a hearing aid. For ears with sensorineural hearing losses, compliance explained 59 percent of the variation in vent size, whereas the average low-frequency hearing loss explained as little as 0.3 percent. In a laboratory experiment, the objective occlusion effect measured with the participants' own voices showed a similar relationship with compliance. Whereas the former relationship between compliance and vent size may be explained by a simple model, the latter relationship turns out to be the opposite of what a firstorder model predicts. Hence, compliance must be indicative of another aspect of the occlusion mechanism, which has a more profound influence on the observed occlusion effect than compliance itself.


2021 ◽  
pp. 107895
Author(s):  
Peter J. Hills ◽  
Gizem Arabacı ◽  
Jodie Fagg ◽  
Louise Canter ◽  
Catherine Thompson ◽  
...  

2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 209-215
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Furman ◽  
Mark S. Redfern ◽  
Rolf G. Jacob

Previous studies of vestibulo-ocular function in patients with anxiety disorders have suggested a higher prevalence of peripheral vestibular dysfunction compared to control populations, especially in panic disorder with agoraphobia. Also, our recent companion studies have indicated abnormalities in postural control in patients with anxiety disorders who report a high degree of space and motion discomfort. The aim of the present study was to assess the VOR, including the semicircular canal-ocular reflex, the otolith-ocular reflex, and semicircular canal-otolith interaction, in a well-defined group of patients with anxiety disorders. The study included 72 patients with anxiety disorders (age 30.6 +/− 10.6 yrs; 60 (83.3% F) and 29 psychiatrically normal controls (age 35.0 +/minus; 11.6 yrs; 24 (82.8% F). 25 patients had panic disorder; 47 patients had non-panic anxiety. Patients were further categorized based on the presence (45 of 72) or absence (27 of 72) of height phobia and the presence (27 of 72) or absence (45 of 72) of excessive space and motion discomfort (SMD). Sinusoidal and constant velocity earth-vertical axis rotation (EVAR) was used to assess the semicircular canal-ocular reflex. Constant velocity off-vertical axis rotation (OVAR) was used to assess both the otolith-ocular reflex and static semicircular canal-otolith interaction. Sinusoidal OVAR was used to assess dynamic semicircular canal-otolith interaction. The eye movement response to rotation was measured using bitemporal electro-oculography. Results showed a significantly higher VOR gain and a significantly shorter VOR time constant in anxiety patients. The effect of anxiety on VOR gain was significantly greater in patients without SMD as compared to those with SMD. Anxiety patients without height phobia had a larger OVAR modulation. We postulate that in patients with anxiety, there is increased vestibular sensitivity and impaired velocity storage. Excessive SMD and height phobia seem to have a mitigating effect on abnormal vestibular sensitivity, possibly via a down-weighting of central vestibular pathways.


2004 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 353-359
Author(s):  
A. Schmid-Priscoveanu ◽  
A.A. Kori ◽  
D. Straumann

In a recent study we demonstrated that otolith input modifies the torsional angular vestibulo-ocular reflex (torVOR) of healthy human subjects: Compared to turntable oscillations in supine position, oscillations in upright position increased the gain of torVOR by 0.1 and cancelled the phase lead originating from low-frequency semicircular canal signals. We asked whether these otolith-related changes of torVOR are still present in patients after vestibular neuritis (VN). Eight patients were sinusoidally oscillated about their naso-occipital axis in supine (canal-only stimulation) and upright (canal-and-otolith stimulation) position. Three-dimensional eye movements were recorded with dual search coils. The patients showed similar otolith-related gain and phase changes of the torVOR as healthy subjects: the gain increased by about 0.1 (p < 0.05) and the low-frequency phase lead from semicircular canal signals was abolished. These results indicate that otolith function after VN is still sufficient to interact with semicircular canal signals to optimize torsional gaze stabilization when the head is upright.


2005 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 1718-1729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neeraj J. Gandhi ◽  
Desiree K. Bonadonna

Following the initial, sensory response to stimulus presentation, activity in many saccade-related burst neurons along the oculomotor neuraxis is observed as a gradually increasing low-frequency discharge hypothesized to encode both timing and metrics of the impending eye movement. When the activity reaches an activation threshold level, these cells discharge a high-frequency burst, inhibit the pontine omnipause neurons (OPNs) and trigger a high-velocity eye movement known as saccade. We tested whether early cessation of OPN activity, prior to when it ordinarily pauses, acts to effectively lower the threshold and prematurely trigger a movement of modified metrics and/or dynamics. Relying on the observation that OPN discharge ceases during not only saccades but also blinks, air-puffs were delivered to one eye to evoke blinks as monkeys performed standard oculomotor tasks. We observed a linear relationship between blink and saccade onsets when the blink occurred shortly after the cue to initiate the movement but before the average reaction time. Blinks that preceded and overlapped with the cue increased saccade latency. Blinks evoked during the overlap period of the delayed saccade task, when target location is known but a saccade cannot be initiated for correct performance, failed to trigger saccades prematurely. Furthermore, when saccade and blink execution coincided temporally, the peak velocity of the eye movement was attenuated, and its initial velocity was correlated with its latency. Despite the perturbations, saccade accuracy was maintained across all blink times and task types. Collectively, these results support the notion that temporal features of the low-frequency activity encode aspects of a premotor command and imply that inhibition of OPNs alone is not sufficient to trigger saccades.


2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (7) ◽  
pp. 1790-1804 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hazel I Blythe ◽  
Barbara J Juhasz ◽  
Lee W Tbaily ◽  
Keith Rayner ◽  
Simon P Liversedge

Participants’ eye movements were measured as they read sentences in which individual letters within words were rotated. Both the consistency of direction and the magnitude of rotation were manipulated (letters rotated all in the same direction, or alternately clockwise and anti-clockwise, by 30° or 60°). Each sentence included a target word that was manipulated for frequency of occurrence. Our objectives were threefold: To quantify how change in the visual presentation of individual letters disrupted word identification, and whether disruption was consistent with systematic change in visual presentation; to determine whether inconsistent letter transformation caused more disruption than consistent letter transformation; and to determine whether such effects were comparable for words that were high and low frequency to explore the extent to which they were visually or linguistically mediated. We found that disruption to reading was greater as the magnitude of letter rotation increased, although even small rotations affected processing. The data also showed that alternating letter rotations were significantly more disruptive than consistent rotations; this result is consistent with models of lexical identification in which encoding occurs over units of more than one adjacent letter. These rotation manipulations also showed significant interactions with word frequency on the target word: Gaze durations and total fixation duration times increased disproportionately for low-frequency words when they were presented at more extreme rotations. These data provide a first step towards quantifying the relative contribution of the spatial relationships between individual letters to word recognition and eye movement control in reading.


2003 ◽  
Vol 56 (5) ◽  
pp. 803-827 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albrecht W. Inhoff ◽  
Ralph Radach ◽  
Brianna M. Eiter ◽  
Barbara Juhasz

Two experiments examined readers’ use of parafoveally obtained word length information for word recognition. Both experiments manipulated the length (number of constituent characters) of a parafoveally previewed target word so that it was either accurately or inaccurately specified. In Experiment 1, previews also either revealed or denied useful orthographic information. In Experiment 2, parafoveal targets were either high- or low-frequency words. Eye movement contingent display changes were used to show the intact target upon its fixation. Examination of target viewing duration showed completely additive effects of word length previews and of ortho-graphic previews in Experiment 1, viewing duration being shorter in the accurate-length and the orthographic preview conditions. Experiment 2 showed completely additive effects of word length and word frequency, target viewing being shorter in the accurate-length and the high-frequency conditions. Together these results indicate that functionally distinct subsystems control the use of parafoveally visible spatial and linguistic information in reading. Parafoveally visible spatial information appears to be used for two distinct extralinguistic computations: visual object selection and saccade specification.


1988 ◽  
Vol 255 (1) ◽  
pp. R27-R37 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Trachsel ◽  
I. Tobler ◽  
A. A. Borbely

Sleep states and power spectra of the electroencephalogram were determined for consecutive 4-s epochs during 24 h in rats that had been implanted with electrodes under deep pentobarbital anesthesia. The power spectra in non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREMS) showed marked trends: low-frequency activity (0.75-7.0 Hz) declined progressively throughout the 12-h light period (L) and remained low during most of the 12-h dark period (D); high-frequency activity (10.25-25.0 Hz) rose toward the end of L and reached a maximum at the beginning of D. Within a single NREMS episode (duration 0.5-5.0 min), slow-wave activity (0.75-4.0 Hz) increased progressively to a plateau level. The rise was approximated by a saturating exponential function: although the asymptote level of the function showed a prominent 24-h rhythm, the time constant remained relatively stable (approximately 40 s). After short interruptions of NREMS episodes, slow-wave activity rose more steeply than after long interruptions. The marked 24-h variation of maximum slow-wave activity within NREMS episodes may reflect the level of a homeostatic sleep process.


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