Integration of Vestibular and Auditory Information in Ontogenesis

Abstract

Background: We analyzed the hypothesis that the vestibular and auditory systems are integrative functions.

Methods: The study involved 383 children (5.5 ± 2.4 years old). We assessed the conduct of auditory information by recording the auditory brain stem response (ABR), post-rotational nystagmus (PRN), and cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (cVEMP), and calculated the integration of the parameters. All procedures were carried out using the JACOBI 4 software package.

Results: We have found out that PRN, ABR, and cVEMP represent three different groups of integrative functions, each of which is conditioned by its own integrative mechanism. We have proven that PRN and ABR are associated with age, but no relationship was found between cVEMP and age.

Conclusion: According to our data, the severity of ABR and PRN depended on age, while cVEMP was not associated with age. The functional immaturity of the child's vestibular system, which probably arose in utero, often becomes apparent only at school when reading and writing must be mastered. These skills require maturity of both the vestibule ocular and vestibule spinal functions of the vestibular system.

Keywords: auditory brain stem response; auditory system; cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potentials; paired integrative systems; post-rotational nystagmus; two-block partial least squares; vestibular system.

Figure 1

Age distribution of subjects. The solid line is the number of subjects by year of life (histogram approximation). Dotted line—cumulative percentage in the sample.

Figure 2

Data Distribution of Auditory Brain Stem Response, VI Peak (Normal).

Figure 3

Data Distribution of Post-Rotational Nystagmus (Uniform).

Figure 4

Data Distribution of Cervical Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potentials P13 (Uniform).

Figure 5

Loadings from Two-Block PLS analysis for variables from Table 2. * the correlation coefficient is significant at the p < 0.05 level; the differences between the correlation coefficients themselves are shown in Table 3.