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9 papers
This review looked at studies in animals and people about how stress and the balance system (the vestibular system) affect each other. In many animal experiments, vestibular damage or stimulation turns on the body's stress system (the HPA axis) and short-term stress hormones help brain circuits adjust after vestibular loss.…
Spontaneous reports of vertigo or dizziness, as side-effect of certain drugs, received at our Pharmacovigilance Center, represented the 5% of all reports in 2012. Considering the high incidence of such an ADR for several drugs' classes, it can be speculated that under-reporting also affect vertigo and dizziness. Despite the fact…
Binaural beats happen when two slightly different tones are played to each ear and you hear a third, pulsing tone at the difference between them. This review looked at 14 studies that measured brain activity after binaural-beat sounds. The results were mixed: some studies found brain activity that matched the…
This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study gave subanesthetic S‑ketamine to 24 healthy young people while recording fMRI and EEG at rest. After ketamine, fMRI showed less connectivity in the medial prefrontal cortex and more connectivity in left and right intraparietal (parietal) areas of the default mode network. EEG showed more…
This study tested whether people who are poor at hearing small pitch differences (congenital amusics) are worse at identifying emotions in speech. The researchers used normal speech, low-pass filtered speech (frequencies above ~500 Hz removed), and high-pass filtered speech (frequencies below ~4800 Hz removed). They found that worse pitch perception…
The authors made a score that measures how male-typical a person’s subcortical brain shape is. They trained this score on 2,153 people and then measured it in 1,060 people with autism and 1,166 neurotypical controls. People with autism had a small, higher average “brain maleness” score (d = 0.20), and…
This cross-sectional study measured 130 adults (52 men, 78 women; ages 18–75) with dizziness from four causes: BPPV, Meniere’s disease, unilateral weakness, and central causes. Researchers used the Dizziness Handicap Inventory (DHI) to measure disability and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) to measure anxiety. They found no significant differences in…
This perspective paper looks at cervicogenic dizziness (CGD), a debated condition where dizziness happens with neck pain or neck problems. It explains how altered neck sensory signals may clash with the inner ear and sight, causing balance problems. The paper says current tests are not specific, some treatments like manual…
This randomized controlled trial with 60 adults who had chronic dizziness or vertigo found that adding vestibular rehabilitation therapy (VRT) to standard medication (betahistine) led to better thinking-test results and larger drops in dizziness-related disability than medication alone. Tests that improved more with VRT included digit span and a task-switching…
