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This study aimed to evaluate vestibular perception in patients with unilateral vestibulopathy. We recruited 14 patients (9 women, mean age = 59.3 ± 14.3) with unilateral vestibulopathy during the subacute or chronic stage (disease duration = 6 days to 25 years). For the evaluation of position perception, the patients had to estimate the position after whole-body rotation in the yaw plane. The velocity/acceleration perception was evaluated by acquiring decisions of patients regarding which direction would be the faster rotation after a pair of ipsi- and contra-lesional rotations at various velocity/acceleration settings. The duration perception was assessed by collecting decisions of patients for longer rotation directions at each pair of ipsi- and contra-lesional rotations with various velocities and amplitudes. Patients with unilateral vestibulopathy showed position estimates and velocity/acceleration discriminations comparable to healthy controls. However, in duration discrimination, patients had a contralesional bias such that they had a longer perception period for the healthy side during the equal duration and same amplitude rotations. For the complex duration task, where a longer duration was assigned to a smaller rotation amplitude, the precision was significantly lower in the patient group than in the control group. These results indicate persistent impairments of duration perception in unilateral vestibulopathy and favor the intrinsic and distributed timing mechanism of the vestibular system. Complex perceptual tasks may be helpful to disclose hidden perceptual disturbances in unilateral vestibular hypofunction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the vestibular perception of position, velocity, and time (duration) in humans with rotational stimuli including low velocities and small amplitudes. The participants were categorized into young, middle, and old age groups, and each consisted of 10 subjects. Position perception was assessed after yaw rotations ranged from 30 to 180° in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions. For each position, the rotation was delivered at two or more different velocities ranging from 15 to 120°/s. Position perception tended to underestimate the actual position and was similar during the slow and fast rotations. However, the trends of underestimation disappeared in the old age group. Velocity perception was evaluated by forcing the selection of the faster direction in each pair of rotations toward two positions (30° and 60°) with velocity differences from 0 to 20°/s. Velocity discrimination was similar between the rotation amplitudes or among the age groups. For duration perception, participants chose the rotation of longer duration for three test paradigms with different amplitudes (small vs. large) and durations (short vs. long) of rotation. The accuracy of discriminating duration was similar across the test paradigms or age groups, but the precision was lower in the older group and altered significantly according to the test paradigm. In conclusion, vestibular perception can be assessed using rotations of low velocities and small amplitudes. The perception of position and duration is affected by aging. The precision of duration perception can be influenced by the interactions between the amplitude and duration of motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]