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Dominant parameter of galvanic vestibular stimulation for the non-associative learning processes

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Abstract

Electrical stimulus is one of the common stimulating methods, and Galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) is the oldest form as an electrical stimulation. Nevertheless, GVS is still considered as a secondary stimulating tool for the medical purposes. Even though some unarguable findings have made using GVS, its use has been limited because of its ambiguity as an input source. For better understanding, many previous studies mainly focused on its functional effects, like the ocular reflexes. However, its fundamental effects on the neural activities are still elusive, such as the dominant influences by different parameters of GVS. Here we compared the effects on the neuronal responses by applying two different parameters, strength and rate, of GVS. To assess the dominance on the neuronal responses to these parameters, we designed three independent stimuli. Those stimuli were multiply applied to obtain the responding slopes based on the mechanism of non-associative learning processes, and the effects on the neurons were calculated as an inner angle between two responding slopes. Out of 23 neurons, 15 (65.2%) units were affected more by the strength with a statistical significance (p = 0.047). The ranges of the inner angles also implied the strength (− 3.354°~2.063°) mainly modulated by the neuronal responses comparing with those by the rate (− 2.001°~1.975°). The dominance of the parameters was closely related with the neuronal sensitivity to stimulation (SE) (p = 0.018), while there were few relations with the neuronal regularity, directional preference (DP), and the physiological response (PR) (p > 0.059). Thus, the neural information related with the dominance was delivered by the irregular neurons, and these types of neurons should be the targets for the stimulation.

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Funding

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded partially by the Ministry of Education (2016R1D1A1B03930657, 2018R1A6A1A03025523, and 2019R1I1A1A01041450).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute for Aerospace Medicine, Inha University, High-Tech center #303, 100 Inharo, Namgu, InCheon, 402-751, South Korea

    Gyutae Kim & Kyu-Sung Kim

  2. Institute for Information and Electronics Research, Inha University, High-Tech center #716, 100 Inharo, Namgu, InCheon, 402-751, South Korea

    Gyutae Kim & Sangmin Lee

  3. Department of Electronic Engineering, Inha University, High-Tech center #704, 100 Inharo, Namgu, InCheon, 402-751, South Korea

    Sangmin Lee

  4. Department of Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surg., Inha University Hospital, 27 Inhang-ro, Jung-Gu, Incheon, 400-711, South Korea

    Kyu-Sung Kim

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  1. Gyutae Kim
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  2. Sangmin Lee
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Correspondence to Gyutae Kim.

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Kim, G., Lee, S. & Kim, KS. Dominant parameter of galvanic vestibular stimulation for the non-associative learning processes. Med Biol Eng Comput 58, 701–708 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-019-02117-4

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