Background: Acceleration and changes in acceleration (jerk) stimulate vestibular otolith afferents. Bone-conducted (BC) vibration applied to the skull accelerates the head and produces short latency reflexes termed vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (VEMPs).
Objective: To determine the magnitude, variability and symmetry in head acceleration/jerk during VEMP recordings and investigate the relationship between head acceleration/jerk and VEMP properties.
Methods: 3D head accelerometery (sagittal, interaural and vertical axes) was recorded bilaterally in thirty-two healthy subjects during cervical (cVEMP) and ocular (oVEMP) recordings. BC 500 Hz sinusoidal tones were applied to the midline forehead using a positive polarity stimulus.
Results: The direction of induced acceleration/jerk was predominately backward, outward and downward on either side of the head during cVEMP and oVEMP recordings.Overall, acceleration/jerk was larger in the sagittal and interaural axes and peaked earlier in the interaural axis bilaterally. Acceleration was more symmetric in the sagittal and interaural axes whereas jerk symmetry did not differ between axes. Regression models did not show a systematic relationship between acceleration/jerk and either VEMP reflex.
Conclusions: The pattern of skull acceleration/jerk was relatively consistent between the two sides of the head and across subjects, but there were differences in magnitude, leading to inter-side and inter-subject variability.
Keywords: EMG; Sternocleidomastoid muscle; VEMP; accelerometry; otolith.