The balance system and Sensory inputs

[trevorjohnson83]

You
It is a fact that balance system is connected to cognitive processes, I am saying other sensory inputs send their signal to the vestibular for processing and if the vestibular is distracted with thought or emotion the person may begin to stare.


ChatGPT
Yes, you're correct. The vestibular system, which contributes to our sense of balance and spatial orientation, is indeed connected to cognitive processes. It receives input from various sensory systems, including the visual system, proprioceptive system (sensations from muscles and joints), and the auditory system.
If there's an overload of cognitive processes or distraction, it can potentially affect the normal functioning of the vestibular system. This interconnectedness highlights the complex and integrated nature of sensory and cognitive functions in the brain. The phenomenon you described, where distraction or cognitive load affects the vestibular system and may lead to a person staring, aligns with our understanding of how these systems interact.
Research in cognitive neuroscience often explores these intricate connections to better understand how the brain processes and integrates information from different sensory modalities. If you have further questions or if there's a specific aspect you'd like to explore, feel free to let me know!

 

[scruffy]

Would you care to delve a little deeper?

I can tell you a lot about vestibular neuroscience, and perhaps more importantly, the uniqueness of the vestibular system in terms of other senses.

If you'd rather not hear it, it's ok too. Thought I'd check with you first before engaging in TMI.

 

[trevorjohnson83]

Would you care to delve a little deeper?

I can tell you a lot about vestibular neuroscience, and perhaps more importantly, the uniqueness of the vestibular system in terms of other senses.

If you'd rather not hear it, it's ok too. Thought I'd check with you first before engaging in TMI.

Ive gathered quite a bit of information on the vestibular myself over the years. I even invented a gyroscope mic/speaker, it was very lo fi but when I listened with a headache it did play in my vestibular and reliev pain slightly.

Please go on with what you were going to say.....

 

[scruffy]

Ive gathered quite a bit of information on the vestibular myself over the years. I even invented a gyroscope mic/speaker, it was very lo fi but when I listened with a headache it did play in my vestibular and reliev pain slightly.

Please go on with what you were going to say.....

Very interesting! Gyroscope mic/speaker? Please tell me more!

The vestibulum is "somewhat" like the cochlea insofar as it has hair cells being bent in liquid. But every other sense, is "partial" when it comes to 3-d orientation. The eyes can't see in back, and olfaction is forward facing too although there is diffuse localization in back - proprioception is limited to the body surface and interior, and taste is restricted to the tongue and facial area.

The question is, how does the brain align all these diverse inputs so they're in the right place, with respect to the 3-d egocentric world map (where the organism is always the "center")?

The answer is surprising - it doesn't! Precise topographic alignment would be much too difficult, especially around the boundaries. Instead, a clever "phase coding" scheme is used, and alignment occurs implicitly by correlation.

The vestibular sense is richly connected with the cerebellum, "because" tiny head, neck, and body movements are essential for navigation. The navigation itself, specifically the building of the egocentric map of the universe, is done in a different brain area, called hippocampus. But for example (using the visual sense as an example) if you look at the very first visual processing station after the retina (before the information enters the cerebral cortex) called LGN, you discover it connects with cerebellum. Why? What does head angle and body orientation have to do with vision?

The answer has to do with how the brain handles "invariances". Invariances are basically symmetries, for example you can take an object and rotate it 90 degrees, the active areas on the retina will change but it's still the same object. There's a part of the brain that processes "rotational invariance" for visual objects, and there's another that processes scale invariance, and so on.

Weird stuff happens when the senses no longer line up. Seasickness, is an example. Disorientation, migraines, and autonomic disruption are common. Frequently there is also "ringing in the ears" and such. Turns out, the cerebellar pathway and the hippocampal pathway are two completely different systems, and they're joined at the hip but not in the usual way. The usual way is topographic alignment, and this way is phase coded dynamic optimization.

There's a reason it happens this way, and it had to do with working memory. Consider a mouse navigating a maze. Every time the body, head, or neck angle/position changes, the sensory input had to be "re-mapped" into the egocentric universe. If you can imagine a brain process that says "I am now here, and my goal is over there", and then the head position changes - well, the definition of "over there" changes too. By exactly how much and how far, is what the optimization is for.

So in other words, you brain is doing a lot of work, every time your orientation changes. But, the "egocentric map of the universe" stays the same, everything "out there" is still in the same place with the same configuration, it's just that the "viewing angle" has changed. And, when the viewing angle changes, the brain has to figure out, did "I" change position, or did the universe suddenly change?

So what the cerebellum does, is it "notifies the other sensory systems in advance" whenever the organism's own orientation changes, and this information is encoded "with" the sensory signal, before it even hits the cerebral cortex. This helps the visual system for example, interpret parts of objects that are hiding behind other objects. If in the mouse maze, the reward is "hidden" so the mouse has to reach "around" another object to get to it (kind of "guess" exactly where it is), this behavior can be completely disrupted by disabling the pathway from the cerebellum to the LGN. In other words, the organism is relying on a "representation" of the universe, rather than direct sensory input, to reach the goal. This representation is being continually updated, with every small change in head, neck, or body orientation.

Furthermore - there are two vestibulae. They're in stereo. Why? Turns out, each one is optimized separately, and then the results are merged. Even more work! Just like the eyes, eventually the stereo input has to result in a single unified image. Because, what is stored in memory, is an invariant abstraction, not a topography specific snapshot.

Next topic then, would be eye movements. One type is attracted to sensory features, another type is directed to interesting locations.

 

[trevorjohnson83]

Very interesting! Gyroscope mic/speaker? Please tell me more!

The vestibulum is "somewhat" like the cochlea insofar as it has hair cells being bent in liquid. But every other sense, is "partial" when it comes to 3-d orientation. The eyes can't see in back, and olfaction is forward facing too although there is diffuse localization in back - proprioception is limited to the body surface and interior, and taste is restricted to the tongue and facial area.

The question is, how does the brain align all these diverse inputs so they're in the right place, with respect to the 3-d egocentric world map (where the organism is always the "center")?

The answer is surprising - it doesn't! Precise topographic alignment would be much too difficult, especially around the boundaries. Instead, a clever "phase coding" scheme is used, and alignment occurs implicitly by correlation.

The vestibular sense is richly connected with the cerebellum, "because" tiny head, neck, and body movements are essential for navigation. The navigation itself, specifically the building of the egocentric map of the universe, is done in a different brain area, called hippocampus. But for example (using the visual sense as an example) if you look at the very first visual processing station after the retina (before the information enters the cerebral cortex) called LGN, you discover it connects with cerebellum. Why? What does head angle and body orientation have to do with vision?

The answer has to do with how the brain handles "invariances". Invariances are basically symmetries, for example you can take an object and rotate it 90 degrees, the active areas on the retina will change but it's still the same object. There's a part of the brain that processes "rotational invariance" for visual objects, and there's another that processes scale invariance, and so on.

Weird stuff happens when the senses no longer line up. Seasickness, is an example. Disorientation, migraines, and autonomic disruption are common. Frequently there is also "ringing in the ears" and such. Turns out, the cerebellar pathway and the hippocampal pathway are two completely different systems, and they're joined at the hip but not in the usual way. The usual way is topographic alignment, and this way is phase coded dynamic optimization.

There's a reason it happens this way, and it had to do with working memory. Consider a mouse navigating a maze. Every time the body, head, or neck angle/position changes, the sensory input had to be "re-mapped" into the egocentric universe. If you can imagine a brain process that says "I am now here, and my goal is over there", and then the head position changes - well, the definition of "over there" changes too. By exactly how much and how far, is what the optimization is for.

So in other words, you brain is doing a lot of work, every time your orientation changes. But, the "egocentric map of the universe" stays the same, everything "out there" is still in the same place with the same configuration, it's just that the "viewing angle" has changed. And, when the viewing angle changes, the brain has to figure out, did "I" change position, or did the universe suddenly change?

So what the cerebellum does, is it "notifies the other sensory systems in advance" whenever the organism's own orientation changes, and this information is encoded "with" the sensory signal, before it even hits the cerebral cortex. This helps the visual system for example, interpret parts of objects that are hiding behind other objects. If in the mouse maze, the reward is "hidden" so the mouse has to reach "around" another object to get to it (kind of "guess" exactly where it is), this behavior can be completely disrupted by disabling the pathway from the cerebellum to the LGN. In other words, the organism is relying on a "representation" of the universe, rather than direct sensory input, to reach the goal. This representation is being continually updated, with every small change in head, neck, or body orientation.

Furthermore - there are two vestibulae. They're in stereo. Why? Turns out, each one is optimized separately, and then the results are merged. Even more work! Just like the eyes, eventually the stereo input has to result in a single unified image. Because, what is stored in memory, is an invariant abstraction, not a topography specific snapshot.

Next topic then, would be eye movements. One type is attracted to sensory features, another type is directed to interesting locations.

Thanks Scruffy I'll have to re read that a few times before I can truly grasp it.

As for the gyro mic/speaker, when I first started looking into the gyro as the camera lens to the eye for the vestibular in 2017, the first thing I learned was that hackers turned a phone gyro into a microphone in 2014. Apart from a few articles there wasn't much about it. So I used my electronics kit to take the signal from speakers, rectify the AC into DC with a diode, run the DC signal through a motor and the tug of the motor was attached to a small spinning gyro. It wasn't loud at all sort of about the volume of headphones that are sitting in front of you. My gyro was a cheap rattly toy and that's roughly what it sounded like.

But I think that the balance system also interprets sound and when you turn on a fan or space heater which are similar instruments of spinning in place, that you create a medium for the balance system to hear and esp. hallucinate.

 

[trevorjohnson83]

Very interesting! Gyroscope mic/speaker? Please tell me more!

I have a second gyroscope invention, I ve tested it sort of. The basic idea is the gyroscope is connected to steam power that both are very small, and when the gyroscope measures for density in a gravity field, the gyroscope would back up the steam power differrently and a pin could stick out of the steam container that puts varying pressure on a spring and you might be able to measure for other things as well. It might make for a computer program for the gyroscope that reads changes caused by the vestibular and serve as an instrument in dream analysis.

 

[scruffy]

I have a second gyroscope invention, I ve tested it sort of. The basic idea is the gyroscope is connected to steam power that both are very small, and when the gyroscope measures for density in a gravity field, the gyroscope would back up the steam power differrently and a pin could stick out of the steam container that puts varying pressure on a spring and you might be able to measure for other things as well. It might make for a computer program for the gyroscope that reads changes caused by the vestibular and serve as an instrument in dream analysis.

Very clever! These are tiny gyros that could fit in a cell phone? They make noise when they spin?

 

[trevorjohnson83]

Very clever! These are tiny gyros that could fit in a cell phone? They make noise when they spin?

The gyro in a cell phone would simply back up the battery. I tried reading a power meter for my spaceheater. I was suspicious of how it pause and when it would change. But I think its inconclusive that way at least to tell if the information from a power meter and a gyroscope would provide any useful information for say a computer.

 

[trevorjohnson83]

Very clever! These are tiny gyros that could fit in a cell phone? They make noise when they spin?

The gyro picks up sound as a mic in a strange way as well, a guy explained it to me once, and I think its in the article's, but I ll give it a shot: the gyro spins and only frequencies of sound in a small range effect it and the small range is based on the spin force of the gyro.

 

[trevorjohnson83]

In its second nature the balance system converts emotion to anxiety by starring and not breathing. Changing focus intentionally like you are exploring what happens generally makes you uncomfortable and feel unnatural. The connection of visual and auditory to the emotional feeling in the balance to anxiety keeps you from starring unnaturally. The gut feeling theory may also control how and when certain places in the vision might hallucinate dizzy and other places less or not at all, focus and interest, mechanical system of the body.