Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potentials in Splenius Capitis Muscle

Cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential (VEMP) is a short-latency myogenic response recorded from the sternocleidomastoid muscle (SCM) in response to saccular stimulation. The currently understood VEMP was first described by Colebatch and Halmagyi and Colebatch et al. [1, . Since then, VEMPs have become a standard clinical test of otolith function [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, . At present, they are of clinical importance for estimating the severity of peripheral vestibular damage due to different pathological processes such as Ménière’s disease, vestibular neuritis, and vestibular schwannoma [9, 10, 11, 12, . In addition, VEMP testing constitutes an electrophysiological method that can be used to detect subclinical lesions in central vestibular pathways [14, 15, . Briefly, the VEMP is a biphasic response elicited by loud clicks or tone bursts recorded from the tonically contracted SCM muscle, being the only resource available to assess the function of the saccule and the lower portion of the vestibular nerve [5, 6, 7, . However, it is difficult to record VEMPs in children, elderly patients and in patients with poor cooperation as maximal contraction of the SCM is needed for a stable response. The aim of this study was to record VEMPs from the splenius capitis muscles (SPC) to see if weaker muscular contraction will be sufficient to get the responses.