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01-09-2008 | Research Article

Velocity storage activity is affected after sustained centrifugation: a relationship with spatial disorientation

Authors: Suzanne A. E. Nooij, Jelte E. Bos, Eric L. Groen

Published in: Experimental Brain Research | Issue 2/2008

Abstract

Prolonged exposure to hypergravity in a human centrifuge can lead to post-rotary spatial disorientation and motion sickness. These symptoms are mainly provoked by tilting head movements and resemble the Space Adaptation Syndrome. We hypothesized that the occurrence of these post-rotary effects might be related to changes in the velocity storage (VS) mechanism, which is suggested to play an important role in spatial orientation. In particular, we investigated whether the re-orientation of the eye velocity vector (EVV) towards gravity during off-vertical optokinetic stimulation was affected by centrifugation. Twelve human subjects were exposed to a hypergravity load of 3G (G-load directed along the naso-occipetal axis) for a duration of 90 min. Before and after centrifugation we recorded optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) elicited by a stimulus pattern moving about the subject’s yaw axis, with the head erect and tilted 45° to both sides. During OKN with the head erect, we observed a pitch-down component, reorienting the EVV on average 4.5° (SD 3.6, pretest values) away from the stimulus axis. Head tilt induced an additional shift of the EVV towards the spatial vertical of 6.4° on average (SD 3.2). This head-tilt induced reorientation was significantly decreased after centrifugation to 4.7° (SD 2.9), suggesting a reduction of VS-activity. By means of a vector model we estimated the reduction in VS-activity at 31%. Such a decrease in VS-activity might reflect a deterioration of the ability to integrate sensory signals to obtain an estimate of gravity during tilting head movements, resulting in motion sickness in susceptible subjects.

The direction of the eye velocity vector (EVV) denotes the three dimensional axis of eye rotation that generates the particular movement, and its length denotes the magnitude of the velocity. Thus, a purely horizontal eye movement is described by a purely vertical EVV.

To that end, horizontal OKAN slow phase velocity (SPV) was fitted by a double exponential curve (SPV = A ₁ · e\(^{ - t/\tau _{1}} \) + A ₂ · e\(^{- t/\tau _{2}} \), see Jell et al. 1984). The first and smallest time constant accounts for the rapid decay in SPV at the end of stimulation, whereas the longer time constant is associated with VS-activity. Averaged over the available data, this latter time constant equaled 9.1 s (SD 8.9) in the pretest and 6.5 s (SD 5.9) in the posttest.

In the low-frequency domain, a better approximation of g can be obtained by adding a low pass-component of f following \( {{\text{d}}{\mathbf{g}}}/{{{\text{d}}t}} = {{\mathbf{f}} - {\mathbf{g}}}/{{\tau _{{{\text{LP}}}} }} - \varvec {\omega} \times {\mathbf{g}}, \) with τ _LP the time constant of the low pass filter (Glasauer 1992; Bos and Bles 2002). This is a 3D generalization of the model originally proposed by Mayne (1974).

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Title: Velocity storage activity is affected after sustained centrifugation: a relationship with spatial disorientation
Authors: Suzanne A. E. Nooij
Jelte E. Bos
Eric L. Groen
Publication date: 01-09-2008
Publisher: Springer-Verlag
Published in: Experimental Brain Research / Issue 2/2008
Print ISSN: 0014-4819
Electronic ISSN: 1432-1106
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-008-1460-3

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Velocity storage activity is affected after sustained centrifugation: a relationship with spatial disorientation

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