Suppression of visually evoked postural responses (original) (raw)

Summary

Normal subjects standing on an earth-fixed force platform inside a movable room displaced at velocities comparable to those accompanying spontaneous body sway, exhibit a visually evoked postural response (VEPR) some 600 ms after the start of the room movement. It consists of a displacement of the centre of force of the body in the direction of the stimulus (primary component), followed shortly by a corrective displacement in the opposite (secondary component). On second presentation of the stimulus VEPR is markedly reduced, but only if full proprioceptive information from the lower limbs is available to the subjects. A patient deprived of this information showed much enhanced VEPR which he was unable to suppress, in contrast to a patient with absent vestibular function who presented normal VEPR. The results show that in the presence of conflict between different sensory clues, vision is initially dominant in sway control, although adaptive processes can quickly rearrange this hierarchy.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medical Research Council Neuro-Otology Unit, Institute of Neurology, National Hospital, Queen Square, WC1N 3BG, London, UK
    A. M. Bronstein

Rights and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Bronstein, A.M. Suppression of visually evoked postural responses.Exp Brain Res 63, 655–658 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00237488

Download citation

Key words