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Vestibular Evoked Myographic Correlation

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Abstract

This work started from the hypothesis that the physiological processes giving rise to the vestibular evoked myogenic potential (VEMP) can be induced not only by transient sounds but also by a continuous stimulation with a stochastic signal. The hypothesis is based on the idea that the number of motor unit action potentials (MUAPs) decreases after a momentary amplitude increase of the effective stimulus, whereas a momentary amplitude decrease has the opposite effect. This concept was theoretically analyzed by assuming that the effective stimulus is closely related to the envelope of the stimulus actually presented. The analysis led to the prediction that the cross-correlation function of the effective stimulus and the measured electromyogram (EMG) has VEMP-like properties. Experiments confirmed this prediction, thus providing evidence of a novel electrophysiological response: the vestibular evoked myographic correlation (VEMCorr). The methodological approach corresponded to a conventional VEMP study, except that the stimulus (delivered with a hand-held minishaker) comprised not only a series of 500-Hz tone pulses (classical VEMP measurement, for comparison) but also sequences of narrow-band noise with a center frequency of 500 Hz (VEMCorr measurement). Each of the 12 test persons showed a clear VEMCorr. Moreover, VEMP and VEMCorr largely resembled each other, as predicted. Apparently they are two different expressions of a more general mechanism that leads to a roughly linear relationship between stimulus envelope and expectation of the EMG. Future applications of the VEMCorr could exploit that a continuous-stimulation paradigm allows for varying the center frequency of the stimulus without changing the relative bandwidth.

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Notes

  1. A possible Off response was recently observed by Ciardo et al. (2016).

  2. A peak level of 15 dB re. 1 V corresponds to a peak amplitude of 5.62 V. This amplitude is comparable to what has been used by other authors in previous studies. For example, the stimuli used by Rosengren et al. (2009b) had peak amplitudes of 5 V, and in a study by Todd et al. (2010) the peak-to-peak amplitude was 20 V.

  3. Comparable peak accelerations (20 g) were used, for example, by Iwasaki et al. (2008).

  4. Note that a linear dependence on stimulus level (to some extent found in Fig. 9) corresponds to a non-linear dependence on stimulus intensity, owing to the logarithmic nature of the dB scale.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ENT Clinic, Münster University Hospital, Kardinal-von-Galen-Ring 10, 48129, Münster, Germany

    Bernd Lütkenhöner

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  1. Bernd Lütkenhöner
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Correspondence to Bernd Lütkenhöner.

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This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (grant LU 342/12-1).

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Lütkenhöner, B. Vestibular Evoked Myographic Correlation. JARO 20, 99–114 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10162-018-00698-9

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