Cross plane transfer of vestibular adaptation to human centrifugation

Human short-radius centrifugation (SRC) is being investigated as a volume-efficient means of delivering intermittent doses of "artificial gravity" to counter the deleterious effects of long exposures to weightlessness. Rotation rates on short radius centrifuges are high to provide the needed g-loading, and therefore entail a variety of unusual vestibular stimuli when certain head movements are made. Since these movements can elicit inappropriate nystagmus, illusions of tumbling, and motion sickness, efforts have been made to adapt people to the stimuli. So far these efforts have been successful in showing that people will adapt to at least one plane of head motion, the yaw (transverse) plane, during supine head-on-axis rotation. However, astronauts must be adapted to all planes of head motion if they are to function normally on the centrifuge. If adaptation to yaw head turns transferred to some extent to pitch (sagittal) plane turns, or any other plane of motion, it would greatly simplify and hasten the adaptation process. To investigate if transfer of adaptation across planes is possible, 10 subjects in the Experimental Group performed a sufficient number of yaw plane head turns to demonstrate adaptation. Adaptation was indicated by decreases in metrics of the off-axis vestibuloocular reflex induced by the head turns, and by subjective ratings of illusory motion. A block of pitch movements was performed before and after the yaw movements, and these two pitch blocks were compared to assess how much adaptation to pitch head turns had taken place. The same procedure was followed on a subsequent day. A Control Group of 10 subjects performed only the blocks of pitch turns, and their adaptation was compared to the adaptation to pitch turns measured in the Experimental

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Garrick-Bethell, Ian, 1980-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Laurence R. Young.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/17770

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/17770