Welgampola, MS;
Ramsay, E;
Gleeson, MJ;
Day, BL;
(2013)
Asymmetry of balance responses to monaural galvanic vestibular stimulation in subjects with vestibular schwannoma.
Clinical Neurophysiology
, 124
(9)
pp. 1835-1839.
10.1016/j.clinph.2013.03.015.
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Abstract
OBJECTIVE: We investigated the potential of galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) to quantify lateralised asymmetry of the vestibulospinal pathways by measuring balance responses to monaural GVS in 10 subjects with vestibular schwannoma and 22 healthy control subjects. METHODS: Subjects standing without vision were stimulated with 3s, 1mA direct current stimuli delivered monaurally. The mean magnitude and direction of the evoked balance responses in the horizontal plane were measured from ground-reaction forces and from displacement and velocity of the trunk. Vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials (VEMPs) to 500Hz air and bone-conducted tones were also recorded. RESULTS: In healthy subjects, the magnitudes of the force, velocity and displacement responses were not significantly different for left compared to right ear stimulation. Their individual asymmetry ratios were always <30%. Subjects with vestibular schwannoma had significantly smaller force, velocity and displacement responses to stimulation of the affected compared with non-affected ear. Their mean asymmetry ratios were significantly elevated for all three measures (41.2±10.3%, 40.3±15.1% and 21.9±14.6%). CONCLUSIONS: Asymmetry ratios of balance responses to monaural GVS provide a quantitative and clinically applicable lateralising test of the vestibulospinal pathways. SIGNIFICANCE: This method offers a more clinically relevant measure of standing balance than existing vestibular function tests which assess only vestibuloocular and vestibulocollic pathways.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Asymmetry of balance responses to monaural galvanic vestibular stimulation in subjects with vestibular schwannoma |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.clinph.2013.03.015 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2013.03.015 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works License, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | Galvanic vestibular stimulation, Vestibular schwannoma, Balance, Vestibular system, Vestibulospinal |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1393785 |
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