Vestibular Ataxia and its Measurement in Man

Some visual influences on human postural equilibrium: Binocular versus monocular fixation

“…The tandem Romberg is the same as the standard Romberg, except that the feet are placed heel to toe rather than side by side. This posture, which attenuates the usefulness of ankle TPK and reflexes, may allow visual information to have a larger influence on postural equilibrium.f It has been successfully used in the past to examine equilibrium (e.g., Black, Wall, Rockette, & Kitch, 1982;Fregly, 1974).…”

Clinical Romberg Testing Does Not Detect Vestibular Disease

“…The tests undertaken by Graybiel and Fregly (5,6) required repetitive testing in a number of conditions and took several minutes. A detected abnormality indicated a probable disturbance of the balance system.…”

“…In the 1960s, Graybiel and Fregly undertook evaluation of vestibular function using the Romberg test in a series of detailed experiments (5,6). They developed the more challenging Btandem Romberg[ or Bsharpened Romberg[ test, which tested balance when placing one foot directly in front of the other.…”

Recurrence quantification analysis of gait in normal and hypovestibular subjects

“…The recurrence quantification analysis revealed that this 'regularity' is less stable in subjects who suffer for vestibular hypofunction, as evidenced by generally lower values in all RQA parameters for most measures acquired ( Fig. 3B and 4B) consistent with lower movement regularity and potential balance impairments in the vestibular patients [7,[10][11][12][13]. There was also a tendency for the head motion to be more regular (higher %rec and %det) than pelvis and trunk in the horizontal plane (anteroposterior and mediolateral directions) for all groups of subjects, while for the vertical direction the effect was different, particularly in the UVH subjects (Fig.…”

“…Evidence for the functional importance of vestibular sensors for posture and equilibrium is also provided in patients with unilateral vestibular loss that suffer from disequilibrium and tend to fall to the side ipsilateral to the lesion [10][11][12] as well as in patients with bilateral vestibular loss that also show balance impairments especially during walking without vision or on unstable support [7,13,14]. However, quantification of dynamic stability during locomotion represents a great challenge since classic analysis measurements such as the amplitude of trunk oscillations or interstep variability of angular motion during normal walking often fail to discriminate clearly between normal and pathological gait.…”