Search results for "Vestibular nuclei"

Thalamic infarctions cause side-specific suppression of vestibular cortex activations.

2005

H2O15-PET was performed during caloric vestibular stimulation of the right and left external ears in eight right-handed patients with acute unilateral infarctions or haemorrhages of the posterolateral thalamus (four right, four left). The posterolateral thalamus is the relay station for ipsi- and contralateral ascending vestibular input to the multiple multisensory vestibular cortex areas. The aim of this study was to evaluate the differential effects of unilateral vestibular thalamic lesions on thalamo-cortical projections, right hemispheric dominance and reciprocal inhibitory visual-vestibular interaction, as well as perceptual and ocular motor consequences during caloric irrigation. The …

Medial Vestibular Nucleus Lesions in Wallenberg's Syndrome Cause Decreased Activity of the Contralateral Vestibular Cortex

2005

Three patients with the clinical diagnosis of Wallenberg's syndrome caused by acute unilateral ischemic infarctions, which included the vestibular nucleus in the medullary brain stem and afferent vestibular pathways, were examined by positron emission tomography (PET) during caloric vestibular stimulation. They all had typical signs of vestibular dysfunction such as transient rotatory vertigo with vomiting at the onset, ipsiversive body and ocular lateropulsion, and a complete ocular tilt reaction with tilts of the subjective visual vertical. Compared with healthy volunteers, who show activation in a network of temporoparietal vestibular areas within both hemispheres, especially in the post…

Voxel-based morphometry depicts central compensation after vestibular neuritis.

2010

Objective Patients who have had vestibular neuritis (VN) show a remarkable clinical improvement especially in gait and posture >6 months after disease onset. Methods Voxel-based morphometry was used to detect the VN-induced changes in gray and white matter by means of structural magnetic resonance imaging. Twenty-two patients were compared an average 2.5 years after onset of VN to a healthy sex-and age-matched control group. Results Our analysis revealed that all patients had signal intensity increases for gray matter in the medial vestibular nuclei and the right gracile nucleus and for white matter in the area of the pontine commissural vestibular fibers. A relative atrophy was observed in…

Firing characteristics of vestibular nuclei neurons in the alert monkey after bilateral vestibular neurectomy

1992

After destruction of the peripheral vestibular system which is not activated by moving large-field visual stimulation, not only labyrinthine-ocular reflexes but also optokinetic-ocular responses related to the "velocity storage" mechanism are abolished. In the normal monkey optokinetic-ocular responses are reflected in sustained activity changes of central vestibular neurons within the vestibular nuclei. To account for the loss of optokinetic responses after labyrinthectomy, inactivation of central vestibular neurons consequent on the loss of primary vestibular activity is assumed to be of major importance. To test this hypothesis we recorded the neural activity within the vestibular nuclea…

Mathematical Model Predicts Clinical Ocular Motor Syndromes

2003

: Clinical ocular motor syndromes were compared with ocular motor syndromes simulated by a mathematical model of the vestibuloocular reflex. The mathematical sensorimotor feedforward model of otolith control of three-dimensional binocular eye position is based on relevant anatomical connections of the vestibuloocular reflex from the utricles to extraocular eye muscles. This is the first attempt to simulate static ocular motor syndromes for unilateral utricular or vestibular nerve failure, lesions of the vestibular nucleus, and lesions of the ascending vestibuloocular reflex pathways. Comparison of the predicted syndromes with those found in patients with unilateral disorders of the vestibul…

18F-fluorodeoxyglucose hypometabolism in cerebellar tonsil and flocculus in downbeat nystagmus.

2006

A patient with downbeat nystagmus was examined by F-fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography once while off and twice while on successful treatment with 4-aminopyridine. All positron emission tomography scans of the patient showed a reduced cerebral glucose metabolism bilaterally in the region of the cerebellar tonsil and flocculus/paraflocculus when compared with a normal database of the whole brain. An additional region-of-interest analysis revealed that 4-aminopyridine treatment lessened the hypometabolism. This finding supports the hypothesis that the cerebellar tonsil and (para-) flocculus play a crucial role in downbeat nystagmus. The hypometabolism might reflect reduced inhibi…

Acute Vestibular Nucleus Lesion Affects Cortical Activation Pattern during Caloric Irrigation in PET

2003

15. Functional mapping of monaural auditory brainstem responses

2012

Background and aims: The pedunculopontine nucleus (PPN) is a new deep brain stimulation (DBS) target, thought to be particularly for useful in ameliorating gait disturbance in Parkinson’s disease. Recent evidence shows a prominent theta (4–7 Hz) rhythm in the PPN (Tsang et al., Neurology, 2010; Simon et al., J. Neurophysiol., 2010; Shimamoto et al., JNNP, 2010). Given that theta activity is modulated by vestibular signals elsewhere in the brain, e.g. hippocampus, (Shin, Synapse, 2010; Chen et al., Neuroimage, 2010), we assessed whether vestibular signals modulate PPN theta activity. Methods: We recorded local field potentials (LFPs) in three patients with implanted bilateral subthalamic nuc…

P13. Dendato-thalamo-cortical pathways in association with otolith dysfunction

2015

Introduction The processing of otolith information within the human cortex is still poorly understood (Lopez and Blanke, 2011). Two distinct anatomical otolith pathways within the thalamo-cortical vestibular network were proposed in patients with thalamic infarctions who presented with contra- or ipsiversive tilts of the subjective visual vertical (SVV) (Dieterich and Brandt, 1993; Baier et al., submitted for publication). Aim of this study was to investigate the dendato-thalamo-cortical pathways in association with otolith dysfunction by means of DTI (diffusion tensor imaging) based on the regions found in a recent patient study using statistical lesion-behavior mapping (Baier et al., subm…

Functional brain imaging of peripheral and central vestibular disorders.

2008

This review summarizes our current knowledge of multisensory vestibular structures and their functions in humans. Most of it derives from brain activation studies with PET and fMRI conducted over the last decade. The patterns of activations and deactivations during caloric and galvanic vestibular stimulations in healthy subjects have been compared with those in patients with acute and chronic peripheral and central vestibular disorders. Major findings are the following: (1) In patients with vestibular neuritis the central vestibular system exhibits a spontaneous visual-vestibular activation–deactivation pattern similar to that described in healthy volunteers during unilateral vestibular sti…