Abstract
Recent behavioural and neural studies of vestibular compensation in guinea pigs are reviewed. Vestibular compensation is not a unitary process in that ocular motor and postural symptoms recover at different rates. Selective section of the horizontal canal nerve alone, rather than total unilateral labyrinthectomy, produces the usual spontaneous nystagmus in light (without roll head tilt or maintained yaw head tilt) which compensates faster than after total unilateral labyrinthectomy. Commissural connections between the guinea-pig vestibular nuclei are not necessary for the compensation of the postural symptoms. Neuronal recordings in compensating animals show a return of resting activity to horizontal canal neurons in the medial vestibular nucleus on the lesioned side which parallels the behavioural recovery. There are permanent neuronal gain changes. It is hypothesized that resting activity returns by virtue of changes in the membrane excitability of neurons in the medial vestibular nucleus, just as it has been demonstrated to occur in deafferented neurons in the lateral cuneate nucleus. Vestibular compensation is probably an unusual and inadequate example of ‘plasticity’ in the central nervous system.
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