scholarly journals Parameters of Off-Vertical Axis Rotation in Unilateral and Bilateral Vestibulopathy and Their Correlation with Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potentials

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 756
Author(s):  
Shin Hye Kim ◽  
Sang-Yeon Lee ◽  
Ji-Soo Kim ◽  
Ja-Won Koo

Off-vertical axis rotation (OVAR) is a laboratory test to assess the otolith function. This study aimed to analyze the parameters of OVAR in patients with unilateral vestibular hypofunction (UVH) and bilateral vestibulopathy (BVP), and to correlate the parameters of OVAR with those of VEMPs. Ten healthy volunteers, 41 UVH, and 13 BVP patients performed OVAR. Bias component (BIC) and modulation component (MOC) of UVH and BVP patients were compared with those of healthy controls. BIC and MOC were correlated with amplitude and interaural difference (IAD) of cervical VEMP (cVEMP) and ocular VEMP (oVEMP). In UVH patients, the direction of BICs to affected side rotation were reversed and the absolute value of BICs were decreased when they were compared to healthy controls. In BVP patients, BICs were markedly attenuated. MOCs were not changed in UVH and BVP patients. There was no statistically significant correlation between VEMPs and OVAR.

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Doaa Elmoazen ◽  
Hesham Kozou ◽  
Jaidaa Mekky ◽  
Dalia Ghanem

Abstract Background Patients suffering from vestibular migraine (VM) are known to have various vestibular test abnormalities interictally and ictally. Recently, vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (VEMPs) have become accepted as a valid method for otolith function assessment. Many studies have identified various vestibular symptoms and laboratory abnormalities in migraineurs. Since migraineurs with no accompanying vestibular symptoms might exhibit subclinical vestibular dysfunction, we investigated vestibular function using ocular and cervical VEMPs in migraine patients. The aim was to study cervical VEMP and occular VEMP in migraineurs with and without vestibular symptoms interictally. Results Migraine and VM patients showed significantly longer P13 latency of cVEMP compared to controls. A statistically significant cVEMP interaural P13 latency difference was found in VM compared to healthy controls. Cervical VEMP N23 latency, peak-to-peak amplitude, interaural N23 latency, and amplitude asymmetric ratio did not show any significant difference in migraine and VM patients compared to healthy controls as well as no significant difference across the three groups regarding oVEMP parameters. Conclusions Abnormal interictal cVEMP results in migraineurs might indicate subclinical vestibulo-collic pathway dysfunction.


2019 ◽  
Vol 122 (5) ◽  
pp. 2000-2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G. Colebatch ◽  
Sally M. Rosengren

Vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (VEMPs) are now widely used for the noninvasive assessment of vestibular function and diagnosis in humans. This review focuses on the origin, properties, and mechanisms of cervical VEMPs and ocular VEMPs; how these reflexes relate to reports of vestibular projections to brain stem and cervical targets; and the physiological role of (otolithic) cervical and ocular reflexes. The evidence suggests that both VEMPs are likely to represent the effects of excitation of irregularly firing otolith afferents. While the air-conducted cervical VEMP appears to mainly arise from excitation of saccular receptors, the ocular VEMP evoked by bone-conducted stimulation, including impulsive bone-conducted stimuli, mainly arises from utricular afferents. The surface responses are generated by brief changes in motor unit firing. The effects that have been demonstrated are likely to represent otolith-dependent vestibulocollic and vestibulo-ocular reflexes, both linear and torsional. These observations add to previous reports of short latency otolith projections to the target muscles in the neck (sternocleidomastoid and splenius) and extraocular muscles (the inferior oblique). New insights have been provided by the investigation and application of these techniques.


2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (4-6) ◽  
pp. 215-225
Author(s):  
A.H. Clarke ◽  
U. Schönfeld ◽  
K. Helling

Attention is directed towards the recently developed unilateral tests of saccular and utricular function. Together with the now widely used head-thrust test and the standard caloric test for semicircular canal function, these provide for a more comprehensive unilateral examination of labyrinth function. The efficacy of vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (VEMP) as a direct unilateral test of saccular function is currently being demonstrated in an increasing number of reports. Furthermore, the relevant neuronal pathways have been delineated in animal studies, so that all evidence points to the validity of the VEMP as a saccule-mediated response. Concerning utricular function, considerable headway has been made using the unilateral centrifugation paradigm. Testing is performed with a variable radius rotary chair with constant velocity rotation about the earth-vertical axis. Displacing the head by 3.5–4 cm from the rotation axis, the eccentrically positioned utricle is stimulated unilaterally by the resultant centrifugal force. This paradigm can be employed to elicit a utriculo-ocular response (UOR) or to permit measurement of the subjective visual vertical (SVV). More recently, it has also been demonstrated that testing during normal, on-centre yaw axis rotation is often sufficient to localise peripheral otolith dysfunction by means of SVV estimation. This test mode can be easily integrated into routine clinical testing. To illustrate the efficacy of such differential testing, the findings from two patients are presented that demonstrate for the first time an isolated unilateral utricular dysfunction.


2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40
Author(s):  
Alexandra Wallenberg ◽  
Michelle Dafov ◽  
David Malone ◽  
John Craddock

A harzburgite intrusion, which is part of the trailside mafic complex) intrudes ~2900-2950 Ma gneisses in the hanging wall of the Laramide Bighorn uplift west of Buffalo, Wyoming. The harzburgite is composed of pristine orthopyroxene (bronzite), clinopyroxene, serpentine after olivine and accessory magnetite-serpentinite seams, and strike-slip striated shear zones. The harzburgite is crosscut by a hydrothermally altered wehrlite dike (N20°E, 90°, 1 meter wide) with no zircons recovered. Zircons from the harzburgite reveal two ages: 1) a younger set that has a concordia upper intercept age of 2908±6 Ma and a weighted mean age of 2909.5±6.1 Ma; and 2) an older set that has a concordia upper intercept age of 2934.1±8.9 Ma and a weighted mean age 2940.5±5.8 Ma. Anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) was used as a proxy for magmatic intrusion and the harzburgite preserves a sub-horizontal Kmax fabric (n=18) suggesting lateral intrusion. Alternating Field (AF) demagnetization for the harzburgite yielded a paleopole of 177.7 longitude, -14.4 latitude. The AF paleopole for the wehrlite dike has a vertical (90°) inclination suggesting intrusion at high latitude. The wehrlite dike preserves a Kmax fabric (n=19) that plots along the great circle of the dike and is difficult to interpret. The harzburgite has a two-component magnetization preserved that indicates a younger Cretaceous chemical overprint that may indicate a 90° clockwise vertical axis rotation of the Clear Creek thrust hanging wall, a range-bounding east-directed thrust fault that accommodated uplift of Bighorn Mountains during the Eocene Laramide Orogeny.


2006 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
pp. 429-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keisuke Kushiro ◽  
Jun Maruta

1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Charles Schnabolk ◽  
Theodore Raphan

Off-vertical-axis rotation (OVAR) in darkness generates continuous compensatory eye velocity. No model has yet been presented that defines the signal processing necessary to estimate head velocity in three dimensions for arbitrary rotations during OVAR. The present study develops a model capable of estimating all 3 components of head velocity in space accurately. It shows that processing of two patterns of otolith activation, one delayed with respect to the other, for each plane of eye movement is not sufficient. (A pattern in this context is an array of signals emanating from the otoliths. Each component of the array is a signal corresponding to a class of otolith hair cells with a given polarization vector as described by Tou and Gonzalez in 1974.) The key result is that estimation of head velocity in space can be achieved by processing three temporally displaced patterns, each representing a sampling of gravity as the head rotates. A vector cross product of differences between pairs of the sampled gravity vectors implements the estimation. An interesting property of this model is that the component of velocity about the axis of rotation reduces to that derived previously using the pattern estimator model described by Raphan and Schnabolk in 1988 and Fanelli et al in 1990. This study suggests that the central nervous system (CNS) maintains a current as well as 2 delayed representations of gravity at every head orientation during rotation. It also suggests that computing vector cross products and implementing delays may be fundamental operations in the CNS for generating orientation information associated with motion.


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.


2007 ◽  
Vol 97 (5) ◽  
pp. 3256-3268 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.A.A. Vingerhoets ◽  
J.A.M. Van Gisbergen ◽  
W. P. Medendorp

During prolonged rotation about a tilted yaw axis, often referred to as off-vertical axis rotation (OVAR), a percept of being translated along a conical path slowly emerges as the sense of rotation subsides. Recently, we found that these perceptual changes are consistent with a canal–otolith interaction model that attributes the illusory translation percept to improper interpretation of the ambiguous otolith signals. The model further predicts that the illusory translation percept must be accompanied by slowly worsening tilt underestimates. Here, we tested this prediction in six subjects by measuring the time course of the subjective visual vertical (SVV) during OVAR stimulation at three different tilt-rotation speed combinations, in complete darkness. Throughout the 2-min run, at each left-ear-down and right-ear-down position, the subject indicated whether a briefly flashed line deviated clockwise or counterclockwise from vertical to determine the SVV with an adaptive staircase procedure. Typically, SVV errors indicating tilt underestimation were already present at rotation onset and then increased exponentially to an asymptotic value, reached at about 60 s after rotation onset. The initial error in the SVV was highly correlated to the response error in a static tilt control experiment. The subsequent increase in error depended on both rotation speed and OVAR tilt angle, in a manner predicted by the canal–otolith interaction model. We conclude that verticality misjudgments during OVAR reflect a dynamic component linked to canal–otolith interaction, superimposed on a tilt-related component that is also expressed under stationary conditions.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document