Unilateral Peripheral Vestibular Dysfunction: Reeducation and Spatial Orientation.

Motor control includes postural control and voluntary movement. For an optimal motor control it is necessary that brain integrates vestibular, visual and somatosensorial inputs properly, in a nonlinear way. Vestibular system, as an afferent organ, encodes head position in relation to gravity and changes in its linear and angular acceleration. As vestibular central system, it plays an essential role in motor control and in orientation and spatial memory as well.

When a peripheral vestibular lesion occurs, elaboration, interpretation and processing of inputs are deficient and therefore motor control is altered to a greater or lesser degree. As process progress in time, there is a natural neuroplasticity that facilitates recovery or compensate vestibular function, although sometimes this process is incomplete and requires vestibular reeducation This study aims to assess changes in balance control, orientation and handicap perception in one case group with symptomatic unilateral peripheral vestibular dysfunction, before and after a rehabilitation programme (RV). To compare values obtained at the beginning and at the end of RV to those achieved by control group. Finally, this research aims to analyse evolution of spatial orientation quality in symptomatic and non symptomatic participants.