Craniocentric body-sway responses to 500 Hz bone-conducted tones in man

Whole-body responses evoked by bone-conducted sound, a stimulus known to activate vestibular afferents, were recorded in standing subjects deprived of vision. With the head facing forward, unilateral mastoid vibration (500 Hz, 2 s, 136 dB force level) produced an oblique body sway with a consistent lateral component away from the stimulated ear and an average forward component. The side of stimulation had a powerful influence on the direction but not the magnitude of sway. Individuals' mean response directions were significantly clustered between subjects, as well as within subjects for 12 of 16 subjects when tested on five occasions. Single trial analysis did not reveal any habituation of the response. To investigate whether muscle spindle activation might be responsible for the response, vibration was applied directly over posterior and anterior neck muscles and tendons. This generally produced responses that were smaller and with different direction characteristics than with mastoid vibration. In contrast, stimulation over the temporal fossa produced responses similar in magnitude and direction to mastoid stimulation. When the head was turned in yaw to face in different directions the sway response changed direction by the same amount but with no change in magnitude, suggesting response organization in a craniocentric reference frame. Whole-body sway evoked by 500 Hz vibration delivered over sites close to the ear is thus likely to represent a vestibular-evoked balance response. When compared with sway responses evoked by 500 Hz vibration of the left temporal fossa, responses to 1 mA left cathodal galvanic vestibular stimulation were of similar magnitude, yet significantly different in direction, suggesting differences in the end organ afferents activated by these two stimuli. This may enable investigation of previously inaccessible aspects of vestibular function in intact freely behaving human subjects.