title: Nystagmus responses in a group of normal humans during earth-horizontal axis rotation.
abstract: Horizontal eye movement responses to earth-horizontal yaw axis rotation were evaluated in 50 normal human subjects who were uniformly distributed in age (20-69 years) and equally divided by gender for each decade. The subjects were rotated with eyes open in the dark, using clockwise and counterclockwise 60 degree/s velocity trapezoids. The nystagmus slow component velocity (SCV) was analysed using four parameters: Amp, Bias, Mod and Tau. Amp and Tau characterize the canal-ocular reflex to constant velocity steps, while Mod and Bias characterize the "AC" and "DC" components of the otolith-ocular reflex. Results indicated that intersubject variability was larger than that seen in earth-vertical axis data. Tau depended significantly (p less than 0.05) upon subject gender, while Mod increased monotonically with age decade. Linear regression showed a positive correlation between pairs of SCV magnitude parameters (Amp, Bias and Mod), suggesting a common scaling effect. In addition, there was a negative correlation between the value of the decay time constant Tau and each of the three magnitude parameters. Thus, despite large intersubject variability, parameters that describe earth-horizontal yaw axis responses are loosely interrelated and some of them vary significantly with gender and age.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology, University of Pittsburgh, PA.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wall
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Furman
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009760:Nystagmus, Physiologic / Q000502:physiology*; D012016:Reference Values; D012399:Rotation; D012727:Sex Characteristics