RT Book, Section
A1 Halmagyi, G. Michael
A1 Curthoys, Ian S.
A2 Herdman, Susan J.
A2 Clendaniel, Richard A.
SR Print(0)
ID 1135015550
T1 Otolith Function Tests
T2 Vestibular Rehabilitation
YR 2014
FD 2014
PB F. A. Davis Company
PP New York, NY
SN 9780803639706
LK fadavispt.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1135015550
RD 2024/04/16
AB The  balance  organs  in  the  inner  ear—the  vestibular  sensory  regions—are  the  gyros  of  the  human  body,  and  unnoticed,  they  function  continuously  in  an  almost  perfect  fashion,  providing  the  brain  with  information  about  head  position  and  head  movement.  Until  these  organs  fail,  no  one  really  appreciates  their  significance  in  daily  life,  and  anyone  who  has  experienced  an  attack  of  vertigo  will  readily  verify  their  importance.  The  accelerations  involved  in  movements  generate  forces,  and  the  biological  gyros  of  the  inner  ear  detect  these  forces:  both  the  force  imposed  by  gravity  and  the  forces  generated  when  we  move.  The  vestibular  sensors  are  constructed  in  such  away  that  different  regions  detect  rotational  forces  and  linear  forces  in  any  direction.  The  brain  synthesizes  the  information  from  these  separate  force  detectors  to  provide  a  global  integrated  summary  of  where  a  person  is  and  how  the  person  is  moving.  This  realization  is  of  clinical  importance,  because  it  implies  that  disease  affecting  only  one  isolated  region  of  the  inner  ear  has  consequences  for  the  overall  integration  of  all  the  vestibular  sensory  input.  In  this  chapter,  we  deal  only  with  the  otoliths,  the  structures  that  sense  linear  forces,  such  as  the  force  of  gravity  or  the  “straight  line”  acceleration  experienced  in  a  vehicle  accelerating  from  a  stop.