Effect of Different Vestibular Lesions upon body Equilibrium Function in Squirrel Monkeys

Abstract

By utilizing the squirrel monkey rail test, postoperative compensation status after unilateral saccular macula destruction, unilateral utricular nerve section and unilateral lateral ampullary nerve section, were studied in a quantitative fashion and the results were statistically compared. First, it was confirmed that the preoperative random assignments of subjects were evenly distributed among different experimental categories and therefore inter-categoric statistical comparisons of postoperative status were valid. Minimal effect after the unilateral saccular macula ablation toward the maintenance of body equilibrium was reconfirmed. The utricular input is probably the most important for the maintenance of body equilibrium function, inasmuch as slightly less equilibrium disturbance was found after unilateral lateral ampullary nerve cut even though the difference was not significant.