Adaptation to Steady-State Electrical Stimulation of the Vestibular System in Humans

Objectives:Efforts are being made toward the development of a vestibular implant. If such a device is to mimic the physiology of the vestibular system, it must first be capable of restoring a baseline or “rest” activity in the vestibular pathways and then modulating it according to the direction and velocity of head movements. The aim of this study was to assess whether a human subject could adapt to continuous electrical stimulation of the vestibular system, and whether it was possible to elicit artificial smooth oscillatory eye movements via modulation of the stimulation.Methods:One bilaterally deaf patient with bilateral vestibular loss received a custom-modified Med-E1 cochlear implant in which one electrode was implanted in the vicinity of the left posterior ampullary nerve. This electrode was activated with biphasic pulse trains of 400-μs phase duration delivered at a repetition rate of 200 pulses per second. The resulting eye movements were recorded with 2-dimensional binocular video-oculography.Re...