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Vestibular Inputs: The Vestibular System

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Neuroscience in the 21st Century

Abstract

The vestibular system was only recognized in modern times. Working in the late eighteenth-century, Antonio Scarpa described the semicircular canals (SCCs) and ampullae, together with their cranial nerve branches and ganglion. Despite his masterful description of these structures, he was misguided by their location in the inner ear to conclude that they were involved in hearing. That the SCCs served some other function was demonstrated in the 1820s by Pierre Flourens, who championed the use of ablation studies to examine the functions of the cerebellum and other parts of the brain. After interrupting any one of the SCC ducts, he observed that motor activity in the plane of the damaged canal became uncoordinated. Somewhat illogically, he concluded that the vestibular apparatus was directly involved in the production of coordinated movements and that these resulted from a derangement of hearing. This may be contrasted with the modern conclusion that the vestibular portion of the inner ear includes several components that provide inputs to central mechanisms controlling balance and posture, including that of the head.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurobiology, Pharmacology and Physiology, University of Chicago, 5812 S. Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Jay M. Goldberg

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  1. Jay M. Goldberg
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Correspondence to Jay M. Goldberg .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Neurobiology and Behavior, The Rockefeller University, New York, New York, USA

    Donald W. Pfaff

  2. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Rockville, Maryland, USA

    Nora D. Volkow

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Goldberg, J.M. (2016). Vestibular Inputs: The Vestibular System. In: Pfaff, D., Volkow, N. (eds) Neuroscience in the 21st Century. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3474-4_30

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