| Abstract: | The role of spinal afferentation from the lower half of the body in compensation of the sequelae of unilateral loss of vestibular function was studied in experiments on guinea pigs. Division of the spinal cord at the thoracic level under local anesthesia had no appreciable effect on the development of compensation after simultaneous or subsequent destruction of the labyrinth and did not disturb compensation in previously labyrinthectomized animals. Division of the spinal cord in labyrinthectomized animals under ether or chloroform anesthesia was accompanied by a sharp disturbance of compensation. These substances evoked a similar picture of decompensation in unilaterally labyrinthectomized animals with an intact spinal cord also. The results indicate that the disturbance of vestibular compensation discribed in the literature after division of the spinal cord under ether anesthesia is not the result of removal of spinal afferentation from the lower half of the body, but is due to the direct effect of inhalational anesthetics on compensation mechanisms.(Presented by Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR O. G. Gazenko.) Translated from Byulleten' Éksperimental'noi Biologii i Meditsiny, Vol. 88, No. 7, pp. 21–23, July, 1979. |
