Main content
Course: MCAT > Unit 10
Lesson 1: Sensory perception- Sensory perception questions
- Visual cues
- Sensory adaptation
- Weber's law and thresholds
- Absolute threshold of sensation
- Somatosensation
- The vestibular system, balance, and dizziness
- Signal detection theory - part 1
- Signal detection theory - part 2
- Bottom-up vs. top-down processing
- Gestalt principles
© 2024 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
The vestibular system, balance, and dizziness
The vestibular system, crucial for balance and spatial orientation, relies on the inner ear's semi-circular canals and otolithic organs. The canals detect head rotation, while otolithic organs sense linear acceleration and head positioning. When these systems malfunction, it can lead to dizziness and vertigo.
Want to join the conversation?
- Please can someone correct me if I've got this wrong?
The ANTERIOR semi-circular canal is on the z axis, which goes straight up and down.
The LATERAL semi-circular canal is on the y axis, which goes from our left ear to our right ear.
The POSTERIOR semi-circular canal is on the x axis, which goes from our nose to the back of the head.(0 votes)
- I first noticed that the orientation of the semicircular canals is totally different in Visible Body's Anatomy and Physiology than in this video, all three are actually more diagonal to than aligned with any axis or anatomical plane. Upon a search for other depictions, I noticed that about 1/3 of all drawings/renderings of the canals are like that, while the rest 2/3 have the canals more or less strictly aligned to the planes, like in this video. But I found no photos with the outer ear in sight so it was difficult to determine the orientation from actual photos.
Anybody have a sure say on which is correct? Is the diagonal depiction highly imprecise, or is it the kind like in this video that's oversimplified? I'll be checking out Netter's when I get the chance but again, they're all drawings.
------------------
Edit: Sobotta has it more like Visual Body than this video, I'm inclined to think that that is more likely the correct depiction. Then in that case all three semicircular canals would have to work in unison to detect any movement along the three anatomical planes. It makes more sense as detection should be more accurate like this anyway, but it's a much larger data load to the brain.(2 votes)- I am currently studying for the Berkeley Review and their diagram is very similar to this video. Regardless of which one is more anatomically correct, I think the take home point is that the three semicircular canals are oriented perpendicular to each other. Mathematically, this allows for our perception of each of the 3 dimensions (you can read more about this and find the exact math/physics in a book called The Physics of Physiology if you feel like digging deeper, unfortunately I don't have the book with more or I could give you the author.) Due to their perpendicular orientation, each canal is particularly sensitive to a specific type of movement. The horizontal detects rotation along the transverse plan (when you turn your head right and left), the superior detects rotation along the coronal plan (rotate your head to touch your shoulders), and the posterior detects rotation along the sagittal plane (nodding motion). Each semicircular canal is sensitive to one particular type of movement, information from each canal is paired with information from its correspondingly oriented canal in the other ear so that when is stimulated the other is inhibited to the same magnitude. This is what allows the brain to detect all directions (angular acceleration). The otolith organs detect horizontal and vertical acceleration. I hope this helps!
Sources: Berkeley Review, physics(10 votes)
- At6:33, "Buoyancy can have the same effect as gravity and this can sometimes result divers becoming really disoriented when they are under water." So, how do scuba divers get back their Vestibular balance?(5 votes)
- What are "crista ampullaris" and "macula"?(3 votes)
- these are specialized receptor regions containing the hair cells, the Crista Ampullaris for the semicircular canals, and the macula for the utricle and saccule(4 votes)
- Why would buoyancy affect the effect of gravity on the crystals in our ears? The water (if we're swimming) isn't putting a force on them, and there's still gravity...?(3 votes)
- Where do the spins from drinking too much come from?(2 votes)
- How does vertigo work in terms of the endolymph fluid and the otolithic organs? For example, say you are scared of heights and are standing at the roof of a tall building and looking down. Your endolymph fluid can't be moving because you are already standing still and gravity still keeps the crystals in the right orientation as if you are on the ground. Similarly, how does fainting lead to dizziness and tunnel vision in terms of the otolithic organs when you simply see something that causes you to faint?(1 vote)
- Great explanation! I memorized everything really quickly because of your logical explanation, love it! thanks!(0 votes)
- unable to understand the concept at all(1 vote)
- Will one drive and be independent?(0 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] If I asked
you to list your senses, you would probably mention things like sight or sound or taste. But it turns out that
we can actually detect a lot more than that. One sense that's really important, but not often thought about, is our vestibular system. Which is a system that is very important for our sense of balance
and spatial orientation. And while a lot of
information about balance and body position is
gained through receptors in our bodies that let us know where our limbs are in space, it actually turns out that a lot of our sense of balance and spatial awareness comes from receptors in our inner ear. So let's take a moment to focus on our auditory system. And what I want to do is
focus on the inner ear, the part here that's shaded in orange. And to get a better idea of
what that part looks like I've pre-drawn an enlarged version. And if you're familiar
with the auditory system, part of this will probably
look familiar to you. In particular, you might be familiar with this spiraly,
snail-shaped structure here, which is referred to as the cochlea. And this is the portion of your inner ear that's full of specialized
auditory receptors that process sound and
then transfer information about it to our brain. But what I want to focus on now are these loops on the other side, which are referred to
as semi-circular canals. So we have this anterior canal, a posterior canal, and then this lateral canal, which is also sometimes referred to as the horizontal canal. and it can be kind of hard to see this 3D structure on a 2D image, but these canals are actually
all orthogonal to each other, meaning that they are all at
right angles to each other. Let me draw some faces here to try to make this a bit clearer. So I'm gonna draw some axes on this head to try to orient us. So imagine a line that's going from our nose to the back of our head, and we're gonna label that the X axis. And now imagine another line that's going from our left ear to our right ear, and we're gonna label that one the Y axis. And here, let me add the X axis to this top picture, and the Y axis to the bottom, and I've put these as dotted lines to signify that they're actually coming directly out of the screen towards us. In addition to the X and Y axes, though, we also have the Z axis. And that one goes straight up and down. And so you can see it on both images here. And each of our semi-circular canals actually lines up with one of these axes. Each of these canals
is filled with a fluid that's known as endolymph. and when we rotate along a certain plane, it causes the endolymph to shift within that particular
semi-circular canal. And this allows us to sense what plane our head is rotating along. But because we're also sensitive to how much of the fluid
is moving and how quickly, we also can get information about the strength of the rotation. Another part of our inner ear that gives us information relating to balance and spatial orientation are the otolithic organs, and let me write that here. And the otolithic organs include the utricle and the saccule. Which I've labeled here. And they help us to
detect linear acceleration and head positioning. And within these structures are crystals, actual calcium carbonate crystals, that are attached to hair cells within kind of a viscous gel substance. And if we accelerate in a direction, or say, move from
standing up to lying down, this causes the crystals to move because they are heavier than the surrounding gel environment. And when they move, they physically pull on the hair cells that
they're attached to. Which is what triggers an action potential that carries this
information to the brain. So let me try to draw this, so that you can get a clearer
picture of what it looks like. I'm gonna erase my two faces here. And let me change my pen color. Alright, so we have a
person standing here, and within their ear, within their otolithic organs, are hair cells, and those hair cells are attached to crystals. And let me draw another
hair cell next to it. And when we're just standing up, gravity is pushing those crystals in one direction, namely straight down. Let's think about what
would happen if we lay down. So now we have a person
and he's lying down, he's all ready to go to sleep. And now because he's
changed his orientation, these crystals are going
to shift in their position. Because of course,
gravity is still pointing in the same direction. And as they do this, they pull the hair cells along with them. And I just find this to
be really fascinating. I mean think about this, you have crystals in your ear that are physically pulled
in different directions by acceleration and gravity. That allow you to detect head positioning. Ear crystals that respond to gravity. And this is real, this is actually something that is going on in your head right as we speak. And I think this is just one of the coolest sense organs that we have. So you've experienced what happens when the vestibular system works, but you've probably also experienced what happens when it goes wrong. Because this results in things
like dizziness and vertigo. So let's think about how this might work. And let's think back to
the semi-circular canals. As we spin, the fluid
within them, the endolymph, moves along the direction
that we're turning. But this liquid doesn't
always stop spinning right when we do. And this is especially true
for spinning vigorously or for long periods of time. And think about what the
result of this might be. So you have stopped moving, but the continued
movement of the endolymph is resulting in signals
being sent to your brain that indicate that you are still moving, even after you have stopped. And this results in the
experience of dizziness. And when the fluid eventually stops moving is when the dizziness subsides. And interestingly, knowing this also helps us figure out
how we can combat dizziness. Rotating in the opposite direction of how you were originally spinning encourages the movement of the endolymph in that opposite direction. And this can help stop
the continued motion of the endolymph in the original direction by kind of cancelling it out. That's not the only thing
that causes dizziness, though. Remember that one of the ways that we get information
about body position is by sensing the orientation of crystals in our otolithic organs
with respect to gravity. If you were in a
situation without gravity, let's say if you were an astronaut, your otolithic organs probably
wouldn't work very well. Because gravity won't pull
down on them in the same way. And because of this,
concepts like up and down kind of become meaningless. And apparently this can
be really disorienting. And this is also one of the
dangers of scuba diving. Buoyancy can have the
same effect as gravity. And this can sometimes result in divers becoming really disoriented
when they're underwater. And this is especially the case when they don't have visual cues about which way is up
or which way is down.