Vestibulospinal exploration

Introduction and objective: The vestibular labyrinth does not differentiate between the inclination of the body and the head. The most important sensory systems that solve this problem are the visual and somatosensory system, which associated with vestibular sensory organs detect if the body position coincides with the appropriate posture. On the other hand, the central nervous system automatically sends an order to obtain the necessary postural variation, being carried out by the vestibular-spinal reflex. Considering that the two labyrinths are in a situation of vestibular compensation, a sudden destruction in one of them originates a dominant tone in the muscles of the healthy side. Method: Review. Results: There are two types of tests to assess this reflection: static and dynamic. Among the statics is the Romberg test, with its sensitized variant, and the dynamic tests that include the Babinski-Weil walk test, the Barany test and the Unterberger-Fukuda test (or the simulated walk). Conclusions: In the peripheral vestibular syndromes segmental deviations are towards the hypovalent side (harmonic syndromes), while in the central syndromes can be to any side (disharmonic syndromes)