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The integration of neural information by a passive kinetic stimulus and galvanic vestibular stimulation in the lateral vestibular nucleus

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Abstract

Despite an easy control and the direct effects on vestibular neurons, the clinical applications of galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) have been restricted because of its unclear activities as input. On the other hand, some critical conclusions have been made in the peripheral and the central processing of neural information by kinetic stimuli with different motion frequencies. Nevertheless, it is still elusive how the neural responses to simultaneous GVS and kinetic stimulus are modified during transmission and integration at the central vestibular area. To understand how the neural information was transmitted and integrated, we examined the neuronal responses to GVS, kinetic stimulus, and their combined stimulus in the vestibular nucleus. The neuronal response to each stimulus was recorded, and its responding features (amplitude and baseline) were extracted by applying the curve fitting based on a sinusoidal function. Twenty-five (96.2%) comparisons of the amplitudes showed that the amplitudes decreased during the combined stimulus (p < 0.001). However, the relations in the amplitudes (slope = 0.712) and the baselines (slope = 0.747) were linear. The neuronal effects by the different stimuli were separately estimated; the changes of the amplitudes were mainly caused by the kinetic stimulus and those of the baselines were largely influenced by GVS. Therefore, the slopes in the comparisons implied the neural sensitivity to the applied stimuli. Using the slopes, we found that the reduced amounts of the neural information were transmitted. Overall, the comparisons of the responding features demonstrated the linearity and the subadditivity in the neural transmission.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded partially by the Ministry of Education (2010-0020163 & NRF-2016R1D1A1B03930657) and partially by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning (NRF-2013R1A2A2A04014796). We specially thank SunHee Lee for the illustration of the brain. Also, we appreciate the technical supports by EunHae Jeon.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Information and Electronics Research, Inha University, High-Tech Center #716, 100 Inharo, Namgu, Incheon, 402-751, Republic of Korea

    Gyutae Kim, Kyu-Sung Kim & Sangmin Lee

  2. School of Electronic/Electrical Engineering, Inha University, High-Tech Center #704, 100 Inharo, Namgu, Incheon, 402-751, Republic of Korea

    Sangmin Lee

  3. Department of Otolaryngology, School of Medicine, Inha University, 27 Inhang-ro, Jung-Gu, Incheon, 400-711, Republic of Korea

    Kyu-Sung Kim

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  1. Gyutae Kim
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Correspondence to Gyutae Kim.

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Kim, G., Kim, KS. & Lee, S. The integration of neural information by a passive kinetic stimulus and galvanic vestibular stimulation in the lateral vestibular nucleus. Med Biol Eng Comput 55, 1621–1633 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-017-1618-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-017-1618-x

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