The Effects of Vertigo on Cognitive Function

We normally think of vertigo as something that has serious consequences for our ability to walk, run, turn, accurately grab objects, and other motor skills.

But a new study in the latest Journal of Hearing Science revealed that vertigo also has serious consequences for our cognitive abilities.

Researchers did their study on children to find out whether kids with vertigo could develop properly. However, it was found that the same concerns existed for adults, as you will see.

They identified 13 kids with vertigo and recruited 60 others with whom to compare them.

All the kids were tested on their visuospatial working memory, selective visual attention, mental rotation, and space orientation.

All these involve our ability to process information regarding our environment and our place in it that we receive from our senses.

For example, if you read a map and transfer the details of the map to the environment that you perceive around you to make sense of it, you first build mental representations of what you expect the environment to look like, and then compare the mental representation with your environment. That requires many of the skills listed above.

Spatial orientation also involves your feeling regarding where your body is in relation to your environment, such as feeling that you are turning left while turning left, and can include your memory of your route home and your ability to find your car in a crowded parking lot, for instance.

Interestingly enough, previous studies have shown that taxi drivers were particularly good at visuospatial processing because they used it all the time, while many of us who use our smart phone’s GPS features to find our way are becoming increasingly poor our innate ability for it as we rely on our phones to do our brain’s work.

The hypothesis is that vertigo, because it compromises our balance and our ability to see and sense locations in space, will thus compromise this variant of visuospatial processing.

The authors of the new study found that, with the exception of selective visual attention, kids with vertigo were generally bad at processing visuospatial information, especially in tasks that required a lot of focus and attention.

However, they showed no disadvantages when performing simpler tasks that required the processing of static and simple information.

From previous studies, it would appear that this was a problem for adults too.

For instance, in 2015, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society published a study that tested elderly people who suffered from age-related vestibular loss. Your vestibular system is the system in your ears responsible for balance.

Those with poor vestibular functions were bad at tests that involved the rotation of cards, the making of trails, visual memory, and the speedy placement of pins in holes on a pegboard.

In July 2018, the journal Scientific Reports also published a study that found that people with vertigo were poor at a trail-making test based on the speed of their visuospatial perception and the speed of their visuospatial processing.

Luckily, vertigo sufferers improved with these tasks once their vertigo was relieved.

It is therefore very important to heal vertigo as soon as possible.

Fortunately, simple body balance exercises found here heal almost everyone’s vertigo and dizziness – often on the very first day itself…