Use of vestibular galvanic stimulation for correction of the position and of the gaze in a flight simulator

Abstract

Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation(GVS) induce the sensation of movement in subjects in flight simulators and in cosmonauts, creating a cognitive simulation of movement. The system consists of a control unit, a function generator, and a power amplifier. GVS is capable of activating the neurons of the vestibular system and inducing the sensation of movement. When applied in coordination with a flight simulation program GVS modifies the eye movement control responses, electrically activating the vestibular-ocular, vestibule-colic, and vestibule-spinal reflexes. The ultimate goal of this type of stimulation is to generate augmented reality in the pilots during training or potentially also during a flight in microgravity.

Vestibular prosthesis: from basic research to clinics

“…Most authors have used a linear or sigmoidal transfer function to code the gyroscope output as a frequency-modulated output (Gong and Merfeld, 2002;Della Santina et al, 2005Töreyin and Bhatti, 2013;Perez-Fornos et al, 2014;Boutros et al, 2016;van de Berg et al, 2017a). A neuromimetic mathematical model to code the gyroscope or accelerometer output into a series of frequencymodulated pulses has been proposed (Sadovnichy et al, 2007;Vega et al, 2008Vega et al, , 2016Alexandrov et al, 2014). Theoretical analyses using this model reproduce the afferent activity in response to linear or angular accelerations (mechanical coupling differs for both), predicting the complex behavior of afferent neurons, including repetitive spike discharge.…”

A transient decrease in heart rate with unilateral and bilateral galvanic vestibular stimulation in healthy humans

“…Galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) has been used to study postural changes due to vestibulospinal activation (Fujimoto et al., 2016, 2018; Inukai et al., 2018), the integrity of the vestibulo‐ocular pathway (Gensberger et al., 2016; Mackenzie & Reynolds, 2018), and spatial construction of body location (Nakamura et al., 2015; Utz et al., 2011; Volkening et al., 2014). GVS has also improved motor function in patients with Parkinson’s disease (Khoshnam et al., 2018; Lee et al., 2015), in vestibulopathy (Fujimoto et al., 2018; Wuehr et al., 2017) and may improve aerospace pilot performance (Sadovnichii et al., 2019; Vega et al., 2020). In cardiovascular studies, GVS has been recognized as a method to modulate cardiovascular function, like the autonomic cardiac improvement observed using 1/f noisy GVS, which increased covariance between baroreflex and HR in healthy subjects lying on an oscillatory tilt platform (Soma et al., 2003).…”