Galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) is a simple, safe, and specific way to elicit vestibular reflexes. Yet, despite a long history, it has only recently found popularity as a research tool and is rarely used clinically. The obstacle to advancing and exploiting GVS is that we cannot interpret the evoked responses with certainty because we do not understand how the stimulus acts as an input to ...

Although galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) is known to affect the speed and accuracy of visual judgments, the underlying electrophysiological response has not been explored. In the present study, we therefore investigated the effect of GVS on the N170 event-related potential, a marker commonly associated with early visual structural encoding. To elicit the waveform, participants distinguish...

et al., 2012). The sense of roll is consistent with a host of other studies using GVS (Fitzpatrick et al., 1994; Inglis et al., 1995; Day et al., 1997; Zink et al., 1997; Day and Cole, 2002; Scinicariello et al., 2002/2003; Wardman et al., 2003a,b; see Fitzpatrick and Day, 2004 for review). Modeled on this research, we used 2–3 mA currents in lightly anesthetized rats and found strong activatio...

The application of galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) evokes distinct responses in lower limb muscles involved in the control of balance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the balance and lower limb muscle responses to short-duration GVS and to determine whether these responses are modulated by small changes in center of gravity (CoG) and baseline muscle activity occurring during ...

25 26 Quadrupeds maintain the dorsal side up body orientation due to the activity of the 27 postural control system driven by limb mechanoreceptors. Binaural galvanic vestibular 28 stimulation (GVS) causes a lateral body sway towards the anode. Previously we have 29 shown that this new position is actively stabilized, suggesting that GVS changes a set30 point in the reflex mechanisms controllin...

Special suits have been designed to simulate the physical functions of the elderly. However, it has been suggested that these suits do not simulate the postural instability that is actually observed in elderly subjects. We consider that postural instability in the elderly is caused by anomalous signals in the vestibules. In this study, we have verified this hypothesis by using galvanic vestibul...

The vestibular responses evoked by transmastoid galvanic stimulation (GS) in the rectified soleus electromyogram (EMG) in freely standing human subjects disappear when seated. However, a GS-induced facilitation of the soleus monosynaptic (H and tendon jerk) reflex has been described in few experiments in subjects lying prone or seated. This study addresses the issue of whether this reflex facil...

The present study aimed at determining whether vestibular inputs contribute to the perception of the direction of self-motion. This question was approached by investigating the effects of binaural bipolar galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) on visually induced self-motion (i.e., vection) in healthy subjects. Stationary seated subjects were submitted to optokinetic stimulation inducing either ...