Horizontal Canal Afferent Dynamics Measured Using White Noise and Cross Spectral Analysis

Research in vestibular receptor physiology has expanded significantly during the past decade, particularly in areas concerning aspects of information processing and control (3,6,12). The rapid development of system theory and control techniques for engineering applications has provided vestibular researchers with new ways of analyzing, describing, and classifying results from dynamic studies of this biologic control system. The use of computers for accurate stimulus control and data analysis has enabled use of experimental designs that would have been impractical only a decade ago. Our research in the cat semicircular canal afferent system was aided both theoretically and technically by use of certain control applications, programed via a laboratory computer system, as an integral part of the experimental design.