Predicting control mechanisms for human head stabilization by altering the passive mechanics.

The purpose of this study was to clarify the mechanisms controlling head and neck stabilization in the horizontal (yaw) and vertical (pitch) planes by changing the passive mechanics of the head-neck motor system. Angular velocities of the head and trunk in space were recorded in seated subjects during external perturbations of the trunk with pseudorandom sum-of-sines (SSN) stimuli. Four subjects in yaw and nine subjects in pitch actively stabilized their heads in the dark, and performed a mental distraction task in the dark both with and without a weight atop the head. In yaw, the behavior of the head was found to change relatively little with added inertia. As adding inertia to a passive mechanical system should cause substantial changes in dynamics, we inferred that neural mechanisms were invoked to maintain the constant response dynamics. A mathematical model of head-neck control was applied to predict the relative influence of the vestibulocollic and cervicocollic reflexes, and of inertia, stiffness, and viscosity. Using optimization methods to fit the model to experimental data, we identified stiffness and vestibulocollic reflex gain as the primary contributors to the control of head stabilization in space. In pitch, increasing inertia accentuated phase shifts at higher frequencies. Because our pitch model was insufficiently constrained, we only simulated responses due to passive mechanics. Model simulation predicted unstable head motion at all test frequencies. Subjects were able to compensate for trunk motion at most frequencies, however, suggesting that neural components were modulated to exert compensatory responses both with and without additional weight.