Vestibulo-emotional
reflex (VER) [1] is the one of vestibular reflexes, linked human physiology and
emotions. Physiology and pathology of vestibular
system and vestibular apparatus were researched byRobert Bárányreceiving the 1914 Nobel Price in
Physiology. The vestibular system, which
contributes to our balance and our sense of spatial orientation, is the sensory
system that provides the dominant input about movement and equilibrioception.
Vertical human head position controlled by vestibular system by the means of head-neck
anatomy. Two month old child begins to poise the head in
vertical position on reflex level, firstly performs visible movements for it.
Adult people also performs micromovements for poise vertical head position,
because it is impossible to coordinate vertical mechanical balance of heavy
object without movements. The trajectory of 3D head movement is enough
complicated [2,3] and used for different vestibular reflexes researches and
human health diagnostics, because vestibular system links with sensory system,
nervous system and every part of human body. Vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) is a
reflexeye movement that
stabilizes images on the retina
during head movement by producing an eye movement in the direction opposite to
head movement, thus preserving the image on the center of the visual field. Sensory systems code for four aspects of a stimulus;
type (modality),
intensity, location, and duration. Certain receptors are sensitive to certain
types of stimuli (for example, different mechanoreceptors
respond best to different kinds of touch stimuli, like sharp or blunt objects).
Receptors send impulses
in certain patterns to send information about the intensity of a stimulus (for
example, how loud a sound is). The location of the receptor that is stimulated
gives the brain information about the location of the stimulus (for example,
stimulating a mechanoreceptor in a finger will send information to the brain
about that finger). The duration of the stimulus (how long it lasts) is
conveyed by firing patterns of receptors. Vestibular system as typical sensory system reacts to stimulus. But
gravitation is constantly working stimulus, so vertical head coordination
becomes constantly working and reflex process. This is the main physiology
difference between vertical head coordination and any other sensory process
that works sometimes. This difference transfers vertical head coordination into
typical physiological process as heart
rate (HR) measured by ECG
and blood pressure, brain activity measured by electroencephalography (EEG), or thermoregulation measured by galvanic-skin
respond (GSR). Biological evolution used head vertical
coordination for energy regulation, because natural head movement is ideal
vibration movement with high energy range.The other sample of nature vibration
process for energy regulation is dog tail wagging, but humans have not tail and
head movement is more optimal for it. It is understandable, that more high
frequency head movement requests more energy, than low frequency movement. On
sensor level it means, that signals send from vestibular receptors to autonomic
nervous system, brain and muscles are going with different
time delay, depends on biochemical human state. That means dependence between
emotional state and vestibular head coordination, or vestibulo-emotional
reflex. Simple schematic view on the VER display the picture:
Human head
moves slowly when person is calm and still (white head image). Human head moves fast and frequently when person is active, aggressive,
anxiety and nervous (red head image). Of course it is simplified expression of VER and head movement. Real
trajectory of three dimensional head movement is more complicated and every
head point has own trajectory. Real facial-head 3d-form is also more
complicated than circle. So real VER determines dependence of spatial-temporal
movement energy distribution controlled by vestibular system from the emotional
human state. This dependence visualized by vibraimage displays spatial-temporal
movement energy distribution for the accumulated time period.
