Oculomotor and Perceptual Measures of Visual Motion Sensitivity in Patients With Chronic Dizziness Symptoms.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to provide empirical data describing the relationship between behavioral responses to dynamic visual motion in adults with chronic dizziness symptoms with and without clinically identifiable peripheral vestibular impairment. DESIGN: Prospective, quasi-experimental study including individuals with chronic dizziness symptoms with identified unilateral peripheral vestibular impairment (n=27), and individuals with chronic dizziness symptoms without identified vestibular impairment (n=26). We measured (a) visual perception of verticality in a dynamic background, (b) postural displacement in a dynamic background, (c) eye movement behaviors in various visual contexts, and (d) self-rating degree of anxiety. RESULTS: Status of peripheral vestibular function was not a significant predictor of behavioral responses to visual motion. The data show that the ability to fixate on a visual target was predictive of postural control in a dynamic visual background. Trial-to-trial variability in verticality responses and degree of self-rated anxiety were also associated with postural control. CONCLUSIONS: Apart from vestibular function, oculomotor control is important for maintaining control of whole-body motor responses during exposure to a dynamic visual stimulus. Vertical perception precision-not accuracy-may be more important for understanding real-world consequences of visual motion sensitivity. Traditional diagnostic evaluations focusing exclusively on characterizing the peripheral vestibular system may not provide insight into the behaviors associated with visual motion sensitivity.

Use of Commercial Virtual Reality Technology to Assess Verticality Perception in Static and Dynamic Visual Backgrounds.

OBJECTIVES: The Subjective Visual Vertical (SVV) test and the closely related Rod and Disk Test (RDT) are measures of perceived verticality measured in static and dynamic visual backgrounds. However, the equipment used for these tests is variable across clinics and is often too expensive or too primitive to be appropriate for widespread use. Commercial virtual reality technology, which is now widely available, may provide a more suitable alternative for collecting these measures in clinical populations. This study was designed to investigate verticality perception in symptomatic patients using a modified RDT paradigm administered through a head-mounted display (HMD). DESIGN: A group of adult patients referred by a physician for vestibular testing based on the presence of dizziness symptoms and a group of healthy adults without dizziness symptoms were included. We investigated degree of visual dependence in both groups by measuring SVV as a function of kinematic changes to the visual background. RESULTS: When a dynamic background was introduced into the HMD to simulate the RDT, significantly greater shifts in SVV were found for the patient population than for the control population. In patients referred for vestibular testing, the SVV measured with the HMD was significantly correlated with traditional measures of SVV collected in a rotary chair when accounting for head tilt. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides initial proof of concept evidence that reliable SVV measures in static and dynamic visual backgrounds can be obtained using a low-cost commercial HMD system. This initial evidence also suggests that this tool can distinguish individuals with dizziness symptomatology based on SVV performance in dynamic visual backgrounds.

Impact of Cochlear Dose on Hearing Preservation Following Stereotactic Radiosurgery in Treatment of Vestibular Schwannomas: A Multi-Center Study.

OBJECTIVE: Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) is a well-established treatment for vestibular schwannomas (VS). Hearing loss remains a main morbidity of VS and its treatments, including SRS. The effects of radiation parameters of SRS on hearing remain unknown. The goal of this study is to determine the effect of tumor volume, patient demographics, pretreatment hearing status, cochlear radiation dose, total tumor radiation dose, fractionation, and other radiotherapy parameters on hearing deterioration. METHODS: Multicenter retrospective analysis of 611 patients who underwent SRS for VS from 1990-2020 and had pre- and post-treatment audiograms. RESULTS: Pure tone averages (PTAs) increased and word recognition scores (WRSs) decreased in treated ears at 12-60 months while remaining stable in untreated ears. Higher baseline PTA, higher tumor radiation dose, higher maximum cochlear dose, and usage of single fraction resulted in higher post radiation PTA; WRS was only predicted by baseline WRS and age. Higher baseline PTA, single fraction treatment, higher tumor radiation dose, and higher maximum cochlear dose resulted in a faster deterioration in PTA. Below a maximum cochlear dose of 3 Gy, there were no statistically significant changes in PTA or WRS. CONCLUSIONS: Decline of hearing at one year in VS patients after SRS is directly related to maximum cochlear dose, single versus 3-fraction treatment, total tumor radiation dose, and baseline hearing level. The maximum safe cochlear dose for hearingtbrowd preservation at one year is 3 Gy, and the use of 3 fractions instead of one fraction was better at preserving hearing.

Vestibular Migraine and Its Comorbidities.

Vestibular migraine (VM) is one of the most common neurologic causes of vertigo. Symptoms and International Classification of Headache Disorders criteria are used to diagnose VM because no objective tests, imaging or audiologic, have been shown to reliably diagnose this condition. Central auditory, peripheral, and central vestibular pathway involvement has been associated with VM. Although the interaction between migraine and other vestibular disorders can be a challenging scenario for diagnosis and treatment, there are data to show that vestibular rehabilitation and a variety of pharmacologic agents improve reported symptoms and vertigo frequency.

Care Gaps and Recommendations in Vestibular Migraine: An Expert Panel Summit.

Vestibular migraine (VM) is an increasingly recognized pathology yet remains as an underdiagnosed cause of vestibular disorders. While current diagnostic criteria are codified in the 2012 Barany Society document and included in the third edition of the international classification of headache disorders, the pathophysiology of this disorder is still elusive. The Association for Migraine Disorders hosted a multidisciplinary, international expert workshop in October 2020 and identified seven current care gaps that the scientific community needs to resolve, including a better understanding of the range of symptoms and phenotypes of VM, the lack of a diagnostic marker, a better understanding of pathophysiologic mechanisms, as well as the lack of clear recommendations for interventions (nonpharmacologic and pharmacologic) and finally, the need for specific outcome measures that will guide clinicians as well as research into the efficacy of interventions. The expert group issued several recommendations to address those areas including establishing a global VM registry, creating an improved diagnostic algorithm using available vestibular tests as well as others that are in development, conducting appropriate trials of high quality to validate current clinically available treatment and fostering collaborative efforts to elucidate the pathophysiologic mechanisms underlying VM, specifically the role of the trigemino-vascular pathways.

Bimodal Cochlear Implant Listeners' Ability to Perceive Minimal Audible Angle Differences.

BACKGROUND: Bilateral inputs should ideally improve sound localization and speech understanding in noise. However, for many bimodal listeners [i.e., individuals using a cochlear implant (CI) with a contralateral hearing aid (HA)], such bilateral benefits are at best, inconsistent. The degree to which clinically available HA and CI devices can function together to preserve interaural time and level differences (ITDs and ILDs, respectively) enough to support the localization of sound sources is a question with important ramifications for speech understanding in complex acoustic environments. PURPOSE: To determine if bimodal listeners are sensitive to changes in spatial location in a minimum audible angle (MAA) task. RESEARCH DESIGN: Repeated-measures design. STUDY SAMPLE: Seven adult bimodal CI users (28-62 years). All listeners reported regular use of digital HA technology in the nonimplanted ear. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Seven bimodal listeners were asked to balance the loudness of prerecorded single syllable utterances. The loudness-balanced stimuli were then presented via direct audio inputs of the two devices with an ITD applied. The task of the listener was to determine the perceived difference in processing delay (the interdevice delay [IDD]) between the CI and HA devices. Finally, virtual free-field MAA performance was measured for different spatial locations both with and without inclusion of the IDD correction, which was added with the intent to perceptually synchronize the devices. RESULTS: During the loudness-balancing task, all listeners required increased acoustic input to the HA relative to the CI most comfortable level to achieve equal interaural loudness. During the ITD task, three listeners could perceive changes in intracranial position by distinguishing sounds coming from the left or from the right hemifield; when the CI was delayed by 0.73, 0.67, or 1.7 msec, the signal lateralized from one side to the other. When MAA localization performance was assessed, only three of the seven listeners consistently achieved above-chance performance, even when an IDD correction was included. It is not clear whether the listeners who were able to consistently complete the MAA task did so via binaural comparison or by extracting monaural loudness cues. Four listeners could not perform the MAA task, even though they could have used a monaural loudness cue strategy. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that sound localization is extremely difficult for most bimodal listeners. This difficulty does not seem to be caused by large loudness imbalances and IDDs. Sound localization is best when performed via a binaural comparison, where frequency-matched inputs convey ITD and ILD information. Although low-frequency acoustic amplification with a HA when combined with a CI may produce an overlapping region of frequency-matched inputs and thus provide an opportunity for binaural comparisons for some bimodal listeners, our study showed that this may not be beneficial or useful for spatial location discrimination tasks. The inability of our listeners to use monaural-level cues to perform the MAA task highlights the difficulty of using a HA and CI together to glean information on the direction of a sound source.

The Effects of Blast-Related Neurotrauma on Aurally Aided Visual Search While Standing and Walking.

Service members (SMs) who have suffered mild traumatic brain injury due to blast exposure (b/TBI) often report post-concussive symptoms consistent with auditory, visual, or vestibular impairments even when they score within the normal range on traditional clinical tests of sensory function. One possible explanation for this discrepancy is that patients who score in the low normal range in more than one sensory modality may be severely impaired in tasks that require multisensory integration. This study evaluated unimodal and multimodal sensory performance in SMs with b/TBI and healthy controls by having them conduct four tasks while walking or standing in an immersive virtual environment: an Auditory Localization task (AL) where they moved a cursor to the perceived location of a sound; a Visual Discrimination task (VD) where they distinguished between two visual targets; an Aurally-Aided Visual Search Task (AAVS) where they used an auditory cue to locate and identify a visual target hidden in a field of visual distractors; and a Visual-Only Visual Search task (VOVS) where they located and identified a visual target in a field of distractors with no auditory cue. The results show the b/TBI and healthy control groups performed equivalently in the AL and VD tasks, but that the b/TBI group responded roughly 15% slower in the AAVS task and 50% slower in the VOVS task. Walking had no effect on performance in the visual-only tasks, but both groups responded faster while walking in the AL and AAVS tasks without any reduction in accuracy.