TY - JOUR
T1 - Neural substrates, dynamics and thresholds of galvanic vestibular stimulation in the behaving primate
AU - Kwan, Annie
AU - Forbes, Patrick A.
AU - Mitchell, Diana E.
AU - Blouin, Jean Sébastien
AU - Cullen, Kathleen E.
N1 - Funding Information:
P.A.F. received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration under the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions Grant 624158) and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO #016.Veni.188.049). J.-S.B. was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN: 356026-13). K.E.C. received funding from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders at the National Institutes of Health (grants R01-DC002390 and R01-DC013069) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. We thank Dale Roberts for his help with development of an approach to make direct voltage potential recordings during the application of GVS.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s).
PY - 2019/12/1
Y1 - 2019/12/1
N2 - Galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) uses the external application of electrical current to selectively target the vestibular system in humans. Despite its recent popularity for the assessment/treatment of clinical conditions, exactly how this non-invasive tool activates the vestibular system remains an open question. Here we directly investigate single vestibular afferent responses to GVS applied to the mastoid processes of awake-behaving monkeys. Transmastoid GVS produces robust and parallel activation of both canal and otolith afferents. Notably, afferent activation increases with intrinsic neuronal variability resulting in constant GVS-evoked neuronal detection thresholds across all afferents. Additionally, afferent tuning differs for GVS versus natural self-motion stimulation. Using a stochastic model of repetitive activity in afferents, we largely explain the main features of GVS-evoked vestibular afferent dynamics. Taken together, our results reveal the neural substrate underlying transmastoid GVS-evoked perceptual, ocular and postural responses—information that is essential to advance GVS applicability for biomedical uses in humans.
AB - Galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) uses the external application of electrical current to selectively target the vestibular system in humans. Despite its recent popularity for the assessment/treatment of clinical conditions, exactly how this non-invasive tool activates the vestibular system remains an open question. Here we directly investigate single vestibular afferent responses to GVS applied to the mastoid processes of awake-behaving monkeys. Transmastoid GVS produces robust and parallel activation of both canal and otolith afferents. Notably, afferent activation increases with intrinsic neuronal variability resulting in constant GVS-evoked neuronal detection thresholds across all afferents. Additionally, afferent tuning differs for GVS versus natural self-motion stimulation. Using a stochastic model of repetitive activity in afferents, we largely explain the main features of GVS-evoked vestibular afferent dynamics. Taken together, our results reveal the neural substrate underlying transmastoid GVS-evoked perceptual, ocular and postural responses—information that is essential to advance GVS applicability for biomedical uses in humans.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-019-09738-1
DO - 10.1038/s41467-019-09738-1
M3 - Article
C2 - 31015434
AN - SCOPUS:85064906111
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 10
JO - Nature communications
JF - Nature communications
IS - 1
M1 - 1904
ER -