Vestibulo-cardiorespiratory responses at the onset of chair rotation in endurance runners

Abstract

Stimulation of the vestibular system has been reported to elicit ventilatory and circulatory changes in humans. The purpose of this study was to clarify the characteristics of vestibular-mediated ventilatory and circulatory responses in male endurance runners at the onset of passive chair rotation, which selectively stimulates the semicircular canals. Fourteen runners and 14 male untrained subjects participated. The vestibular stimulus test, which consists of 180° chair rotations (left or right half-turns on an earth-vertical axis) for a duration of 2 s, was carried out on each subject. Inspiratory minute ventilation, tidal volume, respiratory frequency, heart rate, and blood pressure were measured by breath-by-breath and beat-to-beat techniques before, during, and after the chair rotation for a total of 60 s. It was found in this study that (i) the relative change of minute ventilation response in the endurance runners was significantly (P < 0.05) greater than in the untrained subjects during and after the rotation, and that (ii) no significant group differences were observed in heart rate and mean blood pressure responses during and after the rotation. In conclusion, vestibular-mediated ventilatory response, but not circulatory response, at the onset of the chair rotation in the endurance runners was significantly greater than that in the untrained subjects. The results from the present study suggest that an increase in vestibuloventilatory response would be attributed to an adaptation to long-term endurance training.