Does anyone know why we need the inner ear to help with balance? What would happen if we didn't have that mechanism?
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Hi Liese,
I guess you are not after knowing the mechanics of it, rather how it affects us. If we didn't have the inner ear we wouldn't be able to balance, we'd feel as if we had just come off a playground roundabout all the time. We'd either fall over or feel very unsteady and probably feel sick too.
Don't know if this helps with what you were asking about?
starfishy
I guess you are not after knowing the mechanics of it, rather how it affects us. If we didn't have the inner ear we wouldn't be able to balance, we'd feel as if we had just come off a playground roundabout all the time. We'd either fall over or feel very unsteady and probably feel sick too.
Don't know if this helps with what you were asking about?
starfishy
Starfishy, Thanks for answering. I want to know WHY we would feel as though we had just come off a playground roundabout? Why can't we walk straight without the inner ear?
Liese
As fawn says, its the vestibular system that
helps us maintain a sense of balance. In that system
are three fluid filled chambers all at right
angles to each other. A bit like the X, Y and
Z axes on a graph. These send constant messages to
the brain about the orientation of the head, and
in conjunction with visual signals from the
eyes this gives us our sense of balance. Without
these fluid filled areas sending signals we
wouldn't know the orientation of our head and
so we would have no sense of balance.
Mind you; that still doesnt explain why we fall
over if we've had one too many does it!!
As fawn says, its the vestibular system that
helps us maintain a sense of balance. In that system
are three fluid filled chambers all at right
angles to each other. A bit like the X, Y and
Z axes on a graph. These send constant messages to
the brain about the orientation of the head, and
in conjunction with visual signals from the
eyes this gives us our sense of balance. Without
these fluid filled areas sending signals we
wouldn't know the orientation of our head and
so we would have no sense of balance.
Mind you; that still doesnt explain why we fall
over if we've had one too many does it!!
I think this balance stuff is way over my head. I keep thinking about the woman who had inner ear damage and always felt like she was going to fall. She had to hold onto furniture and things to walk.
I try to imagine her in my head and it just seems nuts that someone would have to walk like that just because of damage to their inner ear. Like, why can't the brain just say, stand up and walk in a straight line?
Anyway, some doctor was able to rewire her brain and I think the story had a happy ending.
I try to imagine her in my head and it just seems nuts that someone would have to walk like that just because of damage to their inner ear. Like, why can't the brain just say, stand up and walk in a straight line?
Anyway, some doctor was able to rewire her brain and I think the story had a happy ending.
Fawn,
The doctor made some kind of helmet. I can't remember the details now. But it had electrodes on it that he attached to her tongue. He was attempting to get the signal to her brain that she wasn't going to fall a different way.
Was it all in her head that she was going to fall? Things just don't fall spontaneously. The desk just doesn't fall over just because its vestibular system isn't working.
I know this sounds like an odd subject for a mental health forum but I was relating in some weird way to the attachment system. Well, specifically to the attachment systems that aren't working anymore, like mine. And thinking about how we could get signals to the brain another way - not through the emotions, like how he bypassed the ear altogether and went through the tongue.
Or, is it all in our head? That we need attachment in the first place? I know all the survival stuff and I can see how babies and children would benefit from it. But so much seems to go awry that it does as much harm as it does good.
The doctor made some kind of helmet. I can't remember the details now. But it had electrodes on it that he attached to her tongue. He was attempting to get the signal to her brain that she wasn't going to fall a different way.
Was it all in her head that she was going to fall? Things just don't fall spontaneously. The desk just doesn't fall over just because its vestibular system isn't working.
I know this sounds like an odd subject for a mental health forum but I was relating in some weird way to the attachment system. Well, specifically to the attachment systems that aren't working anymore, like mine. And thinking about how we could get signals to the brain another way - not through the emotions, like how he bypassed the ear altogether and went through the tongue.
Or, is it all in our head? That we need attachment in the first place? I know all the survival stuff and I can see how babies and children would benefit from it. But so much seems to go awry that it does as much harm as it does good.
Hey Liese,
I think one of the things here is that a desk is perfectly balanced by itself, and is naturally fixed in one position. Human bodies are floppy and flexible, except when tensed, so we can move around. Without muscle tension, we do fall over (as in fainting or sudden death). If you think about how many tiny muscle movements are involved in keeping someone upright, and how fast the adjustments need to be made, you might get an idea of what the inner ear is helping with.
One way of staying upright is just by getting balanced then keeping all our muscles in exactly the same position (like the desk), but we're not very good at doing that. Try standing on your tiptoes and noticing the different muscles tensing in your body to see how much work is going on to just hold you in position. When you stand on your feet normally, the same kind of thing is going on, just a little more quietly. And then when you're walking around, a zillion other little adjustments are happening in the muscles to keep the weight of your body balanced as you move through different positions - we're just not conscious of them.
The other thing that helps us stay upright is vision. We can see when we're at an angle to the ground or not. So vision helps. But vision isn't really enough - when we're standing on a moving train or boat or walking on an uneven slope, vision can't give us enough info quickly enough for us to continually make all the right muscle adjustments.
So that's where the inner ear comes in. It gives us an additional 'instinctive' sense of horizontal, vertical, up and down. Try standing on a moving train with your eyes closed - you might be able to feel your body working to stay upright, and ask how it knows which bits to tense or relax!
How this relates to attachment... I'll leave that to you!
Jones
I think one of the things here is that a desk is perfectly balanced by itself, and is naturally fixed in one position. Human bodies are floppy and flexible, except when tensed, so we can move around. Without muscle tension, we do fall over (as in fainting or sudden death). If you think about how many tiny muscle movements are involved in keeping someone upright, and how fast the adjustments need to be made, you might get an idea of what the inner ear is helping with.
One way of staying upright is just by getting balanced then keeping all our muscles in exactly the same position (like the desk), but we're not very good at doing that. Try standing on your tiptoes and noticing the different muscles tensing in your body to see how much work is going on to just hold you in position. When you stand on your feet normally, the same kind of thing is going on, just a little more quietly. And then when you're walking around, a zillion other little adjustments are happening in the muscles to keep the weight of your body balanced as you move through different positions - we're just not conscious of them.
The other thing that helps us stay upright is vision. We can see when we're at an angle to the ground or not. So vision helps. But vision isn't really enough - when we're standing on a moving train or boat or walking on an uneven slope, vision can't give us enough info quickly enough for us to continually make all the right muscle adjustments.
So that's where the inner ear comes in. It gives us an additional 'instinctive' sense of horizontal, vertical, up and down. Try standing on a moving train with your eyes closed - you might be able to feel your body working to stay upright, and ask how it knows which bits to tense or relax!
How this relates to attachment... I'll leave that to you!
Jones