Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session

Course Description

This course introduces sensory systems, and multi-sensory fusion using the vestibular and spatial orientation systems as a model. Topics range from end organ dynamics to neural responses, to sensory integration, to behavior, and adaptation, with particular application to balance, spatial disorientation, posture and locomotion under both terrestrial and space conditions. Depending upon the background and interests of the students, advanced term project topics may include spatial disorientation, vestibular and spatial orientation modeling, flight simulator cueing system design, astronaut adaptation, artificial gravity, motion sickness, navigation, vestibular-cardiovascular responses, vestibular prostheses, or other relevant topics of interest.

Listeners may attend, provided that they read the papers, assist in presentations, and participate in discussions.

See course notes for teachers

Class Format

Students typically discuss two papers each week, followed by a special topic presentation by faculty:

45 minute paper #1 presentation
15 minute discussion
45 minute paper #2 presentation
15 minute discussion
10 minute break
40 minute presentation/discussion by faculty on specialty topic
5 minute introduction to next topic

Calendar

SES #	TOPICS	SPECIALTY TOPICS	FACULTY ADVISER	DEADLINES
1	Introduction and organization, review of peripheral physiology	Intro to vestibular test methods, JC paper	Oman	Organize, make presentation assignments, discuss term paper requirements
2	SCC afferent response dynamics	Fluid and cupula mechanics, SCC allometry, otoscope and caloric demo	Oman
3	Otolith afferent response; discharge variations	BPPV, aerobatic wobblies	Oman
4	Canal- otolith interaction, velocity storage, and modeling	Canal otolith interaction and observer model demo	Merfeld
5	Efferents		Cullen	Term paper topic proposals and preliminary bibliographies due
6	Noise/thresholds	Thresholds as a vestibular diagnostic	Merfeld	Proposals returned, faculty term paper advisors assigned
7	Eye movement control system	Eye movement measurement methods	Young
8	Active- passive responses and early processing of brainstem signals		Cullen
9	Cerebellum and adaptation		Cullen	Complete bibliographies due Reading complete start writing
10	Motion sickness	Space sickness incidence, prediction, prevention; pharmacology; placebos; MDD	Oman
11	Individual term paper presentations	AG and adaptation to Coriolis	Young	First draft of term papers and presentations due
12	Vestibulo spinal pathways, locomotion		Young
13	Place and direction and path integration; limbic head direction, place and grid cells	VRIs and inversion illusions in 0-G, limbic frame hypothesis, Taube parabolic HD and Knierim neurolab PC experiments; Barker rotunda direction vertigo demo	Oman	Faculty reviewers provide comments/suggestions
14	Space and aviation applications	MVL centrifuge and prism goggles demo	Young	Final versions of term papers due

Grading

ACTIVITIES	PERCENTAGES
Participation – contributions to discussion	33%
Presentations	34%
Term project proposal and bibliography	3%
Term project presentation	5%
Term project final paper	25%

For our colleagues using this course, the objectives are to survey sensory neural systems and to provide focused areas for students to explore intensely, with collaboration, support and/or critique, as they would for a doctoral thesis or professional paper.

To advance fluency in the language and basic literature with specific application to space life sciences.
To examine specific papers that have been of historic importance and interest in the field.
To promote the capacity of students to appreciate the most important elements of the papers they read, capture some of their subtleties, and then be able to present it in their own words before their peers, with appropriate supporting media.
To provide the experience of collaborating on challenging research in space life sciences.
To provide the opportunity for students to proceed, with faculty support, to complete full studies of a particular topic based primarily on the published literature. (Our students are permitted to apply the work they do to further potential thesis research, but not to present prior research to fulfill requirements of the course.)

The class sessions are three hours long to allow time for student and faculty presentations. The course includes a field trip to a clinical facility at Massachusetts General Hospital. Each student presents to the group in alternate weeks.

The students enrolled in the course were MIT graduate students diverse by gender, race and national origin. In earlier versions, the class has included a student of another institution, a member of the military and an astronaut (and a faculty member at another educational institution.)

The course is taught at MIT by faculty from MIT and the Massachusetts General Hospital (Harvard Medical School).

Faculty planning to use this course might use its apparatus and its references as suggestions—or templates—for a challenging student-centered graduate one-term course in Sensorimotor Neural Systems. Our students reported that they worked hard in the course, and that they were largely pleased (or better) with what they took away from it.

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Sensory-Neural Systems: Spatial Orientation from End Organs to Behavior and Adaptation