Is as good as it gets. All vertebrates, from mice to whales, have a set of three mutually perpendicular fluid-filled tubes—the vestibular semicircular canals (SCCs)—housed in each inner ear. The SCCs mechanically sense rotation, a function that is imperative not only for maintaining balance but also for vision: The SCCs’ neural output causes a reflexive, compensating motion of the eyes, which allows a fixed gaze to be maintained even while the head is moving. Knowing how the canals work is also important for understanding various forms of dizziness. Roughly, an SCC is donut-shaped, with a major radius of a few millimeters and minor radius of a few tenths of a millimeter. Each torus is interrupted by a membrane called a cupula that is impregnated with tiny hairs for sensing the sloshing of the fluid through the canal. Those hairs trigger the neural signal. Incredibly, although vertebrates span nearly three orders...
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1 January 2005
January 01 2005
Citation
Philip F. Schewe; Our sense of balance. Physics Today 1 January 2005; 58 (1): 9. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4796739
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