Vestibular involvement in a passive transport and return task

Rats were trained to return to a water spout after being passively transported away from it along paths containing a 90-deg turn. Path lengths were successively increased to as much as 132 cm by a modified titration procedure. The task was successfully relearned after enucleation. Subsequent vestibular nucleus damage produced a severe, lasting deficit in this task when compared with the effects of cerebellar cortex lesions. In contrast, the vestibular lesions produced only a mild, transient impairment in an olfactory localization task. The most anterior vestibular lesions also affected air righting.