Transforming Vestibular Information for Human Action

内耳中的前庭器官为大脑提供许多运动和感知功能的重要感觉信息。在过去，理解这些机制的研究一直受到阻碍，因为无法选择性地刺激前庭系统而不影响其他感觉系统或影响感兴趣的行为。近年来，我们开创了前庭刺激技术，使我们能够在人类受试者中无创地进行这项工作。我们计划进一步发展这些技术，并使用它们来研究大脑中的一些特定机制，这些机制对于使用前庭信息来控制不同类型的运动行为是必要的。这些机制是至关重要的，但人们对它们的了解并不多。我们计划在人类受试者中研究这些机制，并试图了解它们是如何工作的，涉及大脑的哪些部分，以及它们如何受到神经系统疾病的影响而产生功能缺陷。首先，我们将使用前庭刺激技术来探索与控制眼睛、平衡或随意运动的不同运动系统相关的这些机制。然后，我们将利用这些信息来研究这些机制如何在特定的神经系统疾病中分解。为了做到这一点，我们将研究那些中风影响顶叶皮层的患者，或者那些患有遗传性疾病破坏小脑的患者。我们还将使用脑刺激技术来扰乱健康受试者顶叶皮层的正常功能。这些研究将告诉我们这些特定的大脑部位在这些机制中所扮演的角色，这些大脑区域是否平等地控制前庭对所有运动系统的输入，以及中风和小脑疾病所导致的功能缺陷。

The vestibular organs in the inner ear provide the brain with important sensory information for many motor and perceptual functions. In the past, research into understanding these mechanisms has been hampered by the inability to selectively stimulate the vestibular system without affecting other sensory systems or affecting the behaviour of interest. In recent years we have pioneered vestibular stimulation techniques that allow us to do this non-invasively in human subjects. We plan to develop these techniques further and use them to investigate some specific mechanisms in the brain that are necessary for using vestibular information to control different types of motor behaviour. Such mechanisms are vital but not very much is known about them. We plan to investigate these mechanisms in human subjects and try to understand how they work, which parts of the brain are involved, and how they are affected by neurological disease to produce functional deficits. First, we will use our vestibular stimulation techniques to develop ways of probing these mechanisms associated with the different motor systems that control the eyes, balance, or voluntary movement. We shall then use this information to study how the mechanisms break down in specific neurological diseases. To do this we will study patients who have had a stroke affecting the parietal cortex, or who have a genetic disease that disrupts the cerebellum. We shall also use a brain stimulation technique to disrupt the normal function of the parietal cortex in healthy subjects. These investigations will tell us about the roles played by these specific parts of the brain in the mechanisms, whether these brain areas control vestibular input to all motor systems equally, and the resulting functional deficits caused by stroke and cerebellar disease.