Perceived Horizontal Body Position in Healthy and Paraplegic Subjects: Effect of Centrifugation

mann. Perceived horizontal body position in healthy and paraplegic subjects: effect of centrifugation. J Neurophysiol 90: 2973–2977, 2003. First published July 23, 2003; 10.1152/jn.01129.2002. The perception of body position is mainly mediated by otolith information and visual cues. It has been shown, however, that proprioceptive sources are also involved. To distinguish between the contributions of the vestibular and nonvisual extra-vestibular information to graviception, we tested the effects of a stimulus that leaves the vestibular input unchanged but modifies the information from sense organs located more caudal along the trunk. This was achieved by bringing subjects into a horizontal ear-down position and rotating them around an earth-vertical axis that coincided with the interaural axis. In this paradigm, through centrif-ugal force, the stimulation of the vestibular and the putative extra-vestibular graviceptive organs in the body becomes dissociated. Healthy subjects (n 14) and paraplegic patients with lesions be