Transforming Vestibular Information for Human Action

内耳的前庭器官为大脑提供许多运动和知觉功能的重要感觉信息。在过去，由于无法在不影响其他感觉系统或影响感兴趣的行为的情况下选择性地刺激前庭系统，对这些机制的研究一直受到阻碍。近年来，我们开创了前庭刺激技术，使我们能够对人类受试者进行非侵入性的测试。我们计划进一步发展这些技术，并利用它们来研究大脑中使用前庭信息控制不同类型运动行为所必需的一些特定机制。这些机制是至关重要的，但我们对它们知之甚少。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，大脑的哪些部分参与其中，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、平衡或自主运动的不同运动系统相关的机制。然后，我们将利用这些信息来研究这种机制如何在特定的神经系统疾病中失效。为了做到这一点，我们将研究那些中风影响顶叶皮层的病人，或者患有破坏小脑的遗传疾病的病人。我们还将使用脑刺激技术来破坏健康受试者的顶叶皮层的正常功能。这些研究将告诉我们大脑的这些特定部分在机制中所起的作用，这些大脑区域是否平等地控制所有运动系统的前庭输入，以及由此引起的中风和小脑疾病的功能缺陷。

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.