Topic summary
Vestibular disorder
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Balance disorder.
Signs and symptoms
Cognitive dysfunction (disorientation) may occur with vestibular disorders. Cognitive deficits are not just spatial in nature, but also include non-spatial functions such as object recognition memory. Vestibular dysfunction has been shown to adversely affect processes of attention and increased demands of attention can worsen the postural sway associated with vestibular disorders. Recent MRI studies also show that humans with bilateral vestibular damage (damage to both inner ears) undergo atrophy of the hippocampus which correlates with their degree of impairment on spatial memory tasks.