To investigate the vestibular and somatosensory interaction in human postural control, a galvanic vestibular stimulation of cosine bell shape resulting in a small forward or backward body lean was paired with three vibrations of both soleus muscles. The induced body lean was registered by the position of the center of foot pressure (CoP). During a quiet stance with eyes closed the vibration of ...

We investigated changes of postural responses to repeated bipolar galvanic vestibular stimulation on 5 consecutive days and once again after 3 months. Subjects consisted of 21 healthy volunteers. Except for the first day did the induced torque variance in response to galvanic vestibular stimulation not decrease within each test session, but there was a major reduction from day to day (p< 0.001)...

In a recent paper in Frontiers Cohen et al. (2012) asked "What does galvanic vestibular stimulation actually activate?" and concluded that galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) causes predominantly otolithic behavioral responses. In this Perspective paper we show that such a conclusion does not follow from the evidence. The evidence from neurophysiology is very clear: galvanic stimulation activ...

KEY POINTS Reaching movements can be perturbed by vestibular input, but the function of this response is unclear. Here, we applied galvanic vestibular stimulation concurrently with real body movement while subjects maintained arm position either fixed in space or fixed with respect to their body. During the fixed-in-space conditions, galvanic vestibular stimulation caused large changes in arm t...

The objective for this study was to investigate whether the postural control adaptation during galvanic stimulation of the vestibular nerve were similar to that found during vibration stimulation to the calf muscles. A method for adaptation analysis was used to analyze the evoked changes of posture, stimulus responses and the motion dynamics. The adaptive adjustments of postural control were si...

The discharge patterns of the primary vestibular afferents of the anesthetized pigeon were studied. The mean resting discharge of these cells is similar to that reported for mammals. Neurons varied with respect to rate and regularity of resting discharge. It was found that the higher the mean rate the more regular the resting discharge. Depolarizing currents directly applied to the ampulla of t...

The objective for this study was to investigate whether the postural control adaptation during galvanic stimulation of the vestibular nerve were similar to that found during vibration stimulation to the calf muscles. A method for adaptation analysis was used to analyze the evoked changes of posture, stimulus responses and the motion dynamics. The adaptive adjustments of postural control were si...