Vestibular habituation during repetitive complex stimulation: a study of transfer effects

¹ U. S. Naval School of Aviation Medicine, Pensacola, Florida, and Civil Aeromedical Research Institute, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Thirty-two men were rotated at 7.5 rev/min while facing the center of the Pensacola slow rotation room for several hours. The men were seated 4 ft from the center of rotation; direction of rotation was toward the subject's left. During rotation, subjects were immobile except for series of measured head movements restricted to the frontal plane and to a particular quadrant of that plane for each subject. Nystagmus, illusory phenomena, and nausea were reduced by this procedure, but this habituation did not transfer to other forms of vestibular stimulation including that induced by head movements in an "unpracticed" quadrant of the same plane. Residual effects exhibited in "static tests" after the habituation program were primarily restricted to the practiced quadrant.

Submitted on January 15, 1964