Quantification of Vestibular Dysrhythmia

Abstract

Quantification of dysrhythmia in a nystagmus response has hitherto not been seriously attempted, possibly because the nystagmus response does not easily lend itself to description in mathematical or physical terms. Ideally the nystagmus response consists of a sequence of triangles. Each such triangle is determined by four qualities, i.e. the velocities and the durations of the fast and slow components. Thus, without serious loss of information it is possible to represent a nystagmus reaction by four sequences of values, one for each of the four above mentioned qualities. From each such sequence we have extracted relevant information and presented it in graphical form. It may be assumed that each of the four nystagmus qualities reflects the activity within separate “neuronal systems”. Each of these four systems is then informed upon by three parameters for each nystagmus quality, i.e. by its mean, by its variation coefficient and by its sequential variation coefficient. It is claimed that these three diagrams contain nystagmus information not earlier considered.