Word: vestibular
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...unflaggingly genial spirit buoyed the astronauts through a crammed schedule of round-the-clock science. To study the physiology of space sickness, four of the crew took turns being strapped into a so-called vestibular sled, which snapped them back and forth with the force of just over one G, about a third of what they had experienced during blast-off. While strapped down, they wore special helmets that blacked out their vision and flashed patterns of spots before their eyes in an effort to investigate how the body orients itself when signals to the eyes and inner...
...sensations were caused by a failure of the brain to integrate tactile sensations and balance. Transient out-of-body experiences can occur in anyone, but a glance around is usually all it takes to ground the brain in reality again. The right angular gyrus, however, sits quite near the vestibular cortex, the seat of balance. Jolting the Swiss patient's gyrus apparently threw the delicate feedback system out of synch--creating a state of neural chaos that was exacerbated when she moved her eyes and body. Whether shamans achieve the same state through meditation is impossible...
...Mars, it's impossible for controllers to stop Sojourner from running into an obstacle or over a cliff. The car thus moves excruciatingly slowly--just 2 ft. per minute--reducing the likelihood that it will stumble into trouble. Built-in gyroscopes serve as a sort of on-board vestibular system, helping the rover feel for bumps and potholes; a tracery of five laser beams helps it feel for obstructions. In addition, when Sojourner ventures out it will transmit a regular, pulselike signal back to the lander, which will serve as a sort of vehicular EKG, constantly confirming that...
...work, but he is convinced that they do not fully explain the nature of children's play. The differences, he says, "seem to parallel the morphology [shape and form] of genital differentiation itself: in the male, an external organ, erectible and intrusive; internal organs in the female, with vestibular access, leading to statically expectant...
...high-speed electrochemical reactions. Hyden's team devised an ingenious way to find out what happens to nerve cells when they receive a stimulus. The scientists spun rabbits on a centrifuge, just fast enough to make them dizzy and cause the cells in the acoustic nerve and the vestibular apparatus of the inner ear (a center of balance) to stimulate the brain with a sense of distress. Then they painlessly killed the animals and analyzed the nerve cells...