Neck Influences on the Spatial Properties of Vestibulospinal Reflexes in Decerebrate Cats: Role of the Cerebellar Anterior Vermis

TL;DRAbstract

The vestibulospinal (VS) reflexes elicited by animal rotation modify the activity of limb musculature, thus preserving balance and postural stability. We investigated whether the orientation of these postural responses is strictly dependent upon the direction of head displacement or else can be modified by extralabyrinthine inputs to the goal of stabilizing body position. The experiments were performed in decerebrate cats, in which the effects of static body-to-head displacements were tested on the multiunit EMG responses of the medial head of the triceps brachii to wobble of the whole animal at 0.15 Hz, 10 degrees, both in the clockwise (CW) and counterclockwise (CCW) direction. These stimuli allowed us to determine the muscle response vector, whose orientation component corresponds to the direction of head displacement giving rise to the maximal EMG response. When the animal body was kept straight with respect to the head, the triceps response vector was always oriented close to the

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