Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday time
Speaker 1: for the Vault. This episode originally aired December eight. It
Speaker 1: was part one of our series about spinning around in circles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these were a lot of fun. We get into sort
Speaker 1: of the you know, what happens in the body when
Speaker 1: you spin around in circles? So what happens in the mind,
Speaker 1: or what can happen in the mind, What kind of
Speaker 1: practices do we have to deal with these changes? And
Speaker 1: then also what kind of cultural traditions are there? All right,
Speaker 1: let's spiral out. Welcome just about to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna be talking about spinning
Speaker 1: around in circles. That's right, This is this is probably
Speaker 1: gonna be a two partter. Sometimes we figured this out
Speaker 1: as we go, but I believe this will be a
Speaker 1: part one in a part two, and we're gonna be
Speaker 1: We're gonna be looking at at humans spinning around in
Speaker 1: circles from several different vantage points. So you know what
Speaker 1: is it doing? Uh at a at a biological level, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know a psychological level. Um, how does it factor
Speaker 1: into various traditions and games, etcetera. Um, this is what
Speaker 1: I'm pretty excited to do. And the genesis for this
Speaker 1: one was a listener email who wrote in about about
Speaker 1: spinning uh in um in ballet and we were we
Speaker 1: we had a brief back and forth in a listener
Speaker 1: mail of where we talked about then we're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should totally do an episode. So here we are.
Speaker 1: But to start off, I want to I want to
Speaker 1: start off somewhere where at least my mind went to,
Speaker 1: if not first, then maybe second or third. And that
Speaker 1: is the world of of of fantasy. Combat has found
Speaker 1: in science fiction and fantasy films, but also especially in
Speaker 1: video games. Because when I think of people spinning, uh,
Speaker 1: I have to say, I instantly think of im Bison
Speaker 1: from Street Fighter doing his Psycho Crusher attack. Do you
Speaker 1: remember this one, Joe? I didn't know what was called
Speaker 1: the psycho Crusher, but I remember m Bison. So if
Speaker 1: you ever played Street Fighter, he's like the big guy
Speaker 1: in the hat. He's like the final Boss or something.
Speaker 1: Isn't he. Yeah, yeah, or he tends to be. I
Speaker 1: think sometimes they you know, later in incarnations they introduce
Speaker 1: new bosses, but he's he's the boss. He's this boss
Speaker 1: of street fighter. Yeah. And I think he's supposed to
Speaker 1: be some kind of dictator or something. He's dressed up
Speaker 1: in in I don't know, off brand military regalia. He's
Speaker 1: wearing like a like a captain's hat that's read in
Speaker 1: some kind of uniform. But he's also got the magic powers,
Speaker 1: and so he can attack you by flying at you
Speaker 1: kind of like the raid in like horizontal dive towards you.
Speaker 1: But he's spinning around in circles, yeah, isn't And he's
Speaker 1: flaming of course. And also it's it's a cool attack. Um.
Speaker 1: And you'll see various versions of that particular attack in
Speaker 1: various games. But there's also the version that you see
Speaker 1: in the Mortal Kombat games as his character Nam Kong
Speaker 1: Lao he's the guy with the razor blade hat uh.
Speaker 1: And you also see something similar with Baraka. But but
Speaker 1: they both have attacks in some of the games where
Speaker 1: they spin around like a top and either either it's
Speaker 1: offensive like they're they're spinning like a top and coming
Speaker 1: towards you with their blades or they're spinning like a
Speaker 1: top Kung Mile does this where he he's deflecting you,
Speaker 1: like so if you jump at him, he starts spinning
Speaker 1: and then bam, your injury. Well, it's very much child
Speaker 1: brain self defense logic, where you think, like if I
Speaker 1: spin my arms around in circles, nobody could come anywhere
Speaker 1: near me, right right, It's like that Simpsons been I'm
Speaker 1: gonna move my arms like this, I'm gonna move my
Speaker 1: feet like this, and if you get in the way,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get hit. Uh. I think there's also a
Speaker 1: Loony Tunes Tasmanian Devil vibe to a certainly the the
Speaker 1: the Kung Lal style attack, you know, where you're just
Speaker 1: spinning in one spot and you're just spinning so fast
Speaker 1: that you become a little tornado. Right, So there's at
Speaker 1: least an intuition people have that, you know, you could
Speaker 1: really do some damage to somebody by spinning at them
Speaker 1: in one way or another. Yeah, I have to say
Speaker 1: in Star Wars, Darth City is busts out a cool
Speaker 1: psycho crusher style. I'm not sure if it's actually an attack,
Speaker 1: but more of like an advance, like a way to
Speaker 1: quickly get at your opponents. But he uses this in
Speaker 1: both the Revenge of the Sith and the Clone Wars series.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, you know, I gotta say, I I hate
Speaker 1: I know you're more of a fan of the prequels
Speaker 1: than I am, and I'm not trying to start a fight,
Speaker 1: but I gotta say one of my least favorite things
Speaker 1: about the prequels is there's just way too much spinning
Speaker 1: in the lightsaber battles, and the prequels way too much
Speaker 1: like jumping and flipping around the the lightsaber battles become
Speaker 1: less dramatic and more frantic. I like the lightsaber battle
Speaker 1: in the Empire Strikes Back, you know that that's got
Speaker 1: like classic sword fight drama. The ones where like Yoda
Speaker 1: is just doing like fourteen somersaults in the air and
Speaker 1: these three sixty jumps and and they're they're doing the
Speaker 1: Psycho crusher and twirling around like a screw. I don't
Speaker 1: know it kind of it kind of takes me out
Speaker 1: of the Star Wars mindset. Well, Yoda shortened statue, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's gotta he's gotta do those flips in order to
Speaker 1: combat a tower opponent. Um. I see what you're saying.
Speaker 1: But I do think that the City of Spin works
Speaker 1: really well because it's like it comes out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: and then he instantly uses more traditional attacks to to
Speaker 1: kill like three different Jedi masters. So it seems it
Speaker 1: seems to work well for him. You can't argue with success, Joe.
Speaker 1: I correct there. And also I admit my ignorance because
Speaker 1: when you shared this clip from the movie, I thought
Speaker 1: for a second it was Christopher Lee, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: Christopher Lee, okay, but it shows what I know. Well.
Speaker 1: It does raise the question, though, do we see that
Speaker 1: many full spins in actual combat, because I suppose even
Speaker 1: with something like a spin kick, you have to be careful, right,
Speaker 1: like you don't want to throw off your your own
Speaker 1: balance or present your back to your opponent. Um. Without
Speaker 1: even getting into the magical effects that are often associated
Speaker 1: with these attacks and movies and video games. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: I have to say, I'm not a real fight officionado.
Speaker 1: I'm not like in the M M A or boxing
Speaker 1: ing or you know any any of these. I tend
Speaker 1: to like my my combat fictional and worked. Um, and
Speaker 1: and in those contacts, I love a good spinning kick.
Speaker 1: I love a nice roaring elbow in Japanese pro wrestling. Um.
Speaker 1: But but I was initially unsure, like does it make
Speaker 1: sense to spin or is that just a risky flourish. Well,
Speaker 1: it's funny. I remember asking this myself from the first
Speaker 1: person perspective, because when I was a kid, I took
Speaker 1: I'm doing air quotes here, tae kwond I guess I
Speaker 1: took whatever like severely watered down version of this martial
Speaker 1: art was being taught to young children in Tennessee in
Speaker 1: the ninety nineties. You know, it's like, uh, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what exactly I was learning, but I took taekwondo classes,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, even then as a child, having
Speaker 1: questions about the practicality of the spinning kick moves, because
Speaker 1: there would be a type of kick you do where
Speaker 1: you would turn around, you turn all the way around
Speaker 1: and perform a kick, And I was like, why couldn't
Speaker 1: you just kick without turning? Does this do some kind
Speaker 1: of advantage? Would this ever be applicable in a real
Speaker 1: self defense situation? Uh? Like, even as a kid, I
Speaker 1: remember having the thought, this feels more like a dance
Speaker 1: move than a useful fighting technique, which I think is
Speaker 1: kind of applicable because at least the way I learned taekwondo,
Speaker 1: it was in many ways indistinguishable from a dance class,
Speaker 1: like you were learning routines, like patterns of movement that
Speaker 1: were you know, they were exercise. It was aerobic exercise,
Speaker 1: and it was I guess supposed to look good, look
Speaker 1: cool from the outside. I don't know, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of crossover between dance and exercise
Speaker 1: and martial art. Uh you find you can find these
Speaker 1: these intermingled uh to to a large extent. And I
Speaker 1: guess also there's the psychological aspect to fight too, right,
Speaker 1: something might be more about confusing an opponent. So I
Speaker 1: wasn't just wasn't trre on this either, but I did
Speaker 1: a quick glance around on YouTube to say, okay, are
Speaker 1: legit n n A fights um ending with beIN kicks,
Speaker 1: and I did find this this amazing clip from I
Speaker 1: think earlier in the summer and apparently went viral. So
Speaker 1: if you're at all in an m m A out there,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen this, but it's uh. Hakeen Buckley
Speaker 1: is the m m A fighter and he busts out
Speaker 1: this spin kick, uh in the middle of this match,
Speaker 1: and it's just a complete knockout. I'm usually not one
Speaker 1: to find a lot of joy in um in clips
Speaker 1: of like legitimate knockout blows, but this one was pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: I always fun they make me. They look kind of sickening,
Speaker 1: like watching somebody's head snap back and then they fall
Speaker 1: to the ground. It's like, yeah, this one is a
Speaker 1: bit sickening, So don't don't don't look at it, look
Speaker 1: for it unless you you want to see this sort
Speaker 1: of action. But it did answer my question, like, well,
Speaker 1: that's a spin kick. He certainly did a complete spin
Speaker 1: on that and just knocked a guy out, so um so,
Speaker 1: so that initially answered my question. And I started looking
Speaker 1: around a little bit more on that, and I found
Speaker 1: an interesting post about taekwondo spinning kicks at turtle press
Speaker 1: dot com by sang h Kim and the author points
Speaker 1: out that this apparently what spin kicks weren't a were
Speaker 1: not a viable tactic in taekwondo until the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: uh and and the author explains that this is due
Speaker 1: to advances in footwork and changes in fighting stance preferences
Speaker 1: that made it more of a viable option. Also, less
Speaker 1: restrictive protective gear made it more of an option, as
Speaker 1: did sort of a broadening of style to include different
Speaker 1: weight classes and sort of added creativity to the style.
Speaker 1: So I found that interesting. Okay, well, I'll have to
Speaker 1: take their word for it on that one. I cannot
Speaker 1: claim to have thoughts on this. Well, I'd be interested
Speaker 1: to hear what any and martial arts practitioners out there
Speaker 1: listening to this episode have to say. Certainly right in
Speaker 1: and let us know, you know, within your style or
Speaker 1: within you know, martial arts in general. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that gets going in my brain when I
Speaker 1: think about spinning is that, uh and and I'll have
Speaker 1: an example to talk about a little bit later on.
Speaker 1: Spinning around in circles as an adult is not fun,
Speaker 1: and in fact it's it's not fun for like significant
Speaker 1: periods of time after you're done doing it. But I
Speaker 1: remember as a child I loved spinning around in circles
Speaker 1: and I would just like do it. I'd just be
Speaker 1: out in the yard and be like, yea, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: spin around until I fall over. This is great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of adults, and if not, most
Speaker 1: adults can can can relate to this. Yeah, because you
Speaker 1: think back on the fun, spinny things you did as
Speaker 1: a kid, like remember Mary go out rounds. They still
Speaker 1: have these occasionally at playgrounds, but it was a standard
Speaker 1: playgrounds when when we were kids, and it would just
Speaker 1: be kids just getting this thing going to as fast
Speaker 1: as possible, just incredible speeds and just write it. We
Speaker 1: had this. There was a playground near my grandmother's house
Speaker 1: that had the spinning aluminum death machine that I think
Speaker 1: they originally I think they eventually had to take out
Speaker 1: because it was just injury city. Every time children got
Speaker 1: on it, they'd end up having to go to the hospital.
Speaker 1: And I loved this thing because you could spin it
Speaker 1: so fast, uh like it was it was human powered,
Speaker 1: you know. It was one of those where you push it,
Speaker 1: you'd get it going like Conan the Barbarian pushing the
Speaker 1: mill wheel. But then you build up a lot of
Speaker 1: speed and then you just grab hold and hang on.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what kind of horrific injuries came off
Speaker 1: of this thing, but but it was great when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. And now now that sounds like torture
Speaker 1: to me. I mean the idea of spinning around like
Speaker 1: I did as a child for fun. Now that sounds
Speaker 1: about as appealing as a kick to the groy and
Speaker 1: it's just like, why would you want to do that? Also,
Speaker 1: add that the remember the playground mary uh, spinning things,
Speaker 1: the merrygrounds and whatnot. They would often have that, you know,
Speaker 1: the foot trail beat into the dirt around it, which
Speaker 1: of course would become just a complete circular mud pit
Speaker 1: after a rain, right exactly. Another big one is is,
Speaker 1: of course, when you're a kid rolling down a hill,
Speaker 1: like you know where you you lay down and then
Speaker 1: you just roll down the hill like I remember that
Speaker 1: being a lot of fun, and I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: I encouraged that with with my own son at a
Speaker 1: hill near our our house in a park. But as
Speaker 1: an adult you're like, oh my goodness, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a weird rock here, there's some sort of a pipe here,
Speaker 1: all right, here's a fire ant nest, here's another fire
Speaker 1: ant nest. And that's not even getting into the fact that, yeah,
Speaker 1: as an adult, the idea of spinning that much, you
Speaker 1: would just you'd never get up once you got to
Speaker 1: the bottom of the hill. Yeah, And I think these, uh,
Speaker 1: these changes in experience are not unique to us. It
Speaker 1: seems like there's something going on where like spinning, spinning
Speaker 1: is highly attractive to children then and it loses its
Speaker 1: luster as the body ages. Yeah, so let's let's start
Speaker 1: with the kids. Why did the kids love to spin? Well?
Speaker 1: I was looking around the for information on this, and
Speaker 1: I found a wonderful post on this at the pin
Speaker 1: State Extensions Better Kid Care page, and they point out
Speaker 1: that spinning, rolling, and swinging are crucial sensory and motor
Speaker 1: skill inputs to help children's nervous systems mature and organize.
Speaker 1: So they really need these sorts of big body movements
Speaker 1: in ways they really make our tendency to isolate them
Speaker 1: in deaths or in front of teleschool computers and so forth,
Speaker 1: you know, more than a bit ridiculous. I think maybe
Speaker 1: there's less of that now. I I know that education
Speaker 1: has has has evolved somewhat, and they understand the need
Speaker 1: for big body movements and and and so forth. And
Speaker 1: then they understood it to a certain extent when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. You know, you would still have p
Speaker 1: and whatnot. But yeah, kids need to spin around. You
Speaker 1: you know, when a child spins in circles, it's because
Speaker 1: their body craves it. And the same goes for rolling
Speaker 1: around on the floor, standing on their heads rhythmically swaying. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they need a space to do these things. I
Speaker 1: mean it seems in a way it's information gathering. You're
Speaker 1: you're you're calibrating the system, like you have to do
Speaker 1: with your phone. When the gyroscope or whatever gets you know,
Speaker 1: out of whack, you've got to do some exercises to
Speaker 1: get it back on track. Yeah. So in this extension article,
Speaker 1: the Penn State Extension article that they point out there
Speaker 1: are some very specific ways that spinning helps children. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, it gives them a sense of body awareness,
Speaker 1: establishing their center for improved coordinated movement, a cross both
Speaker 1: sides of their bodies. Uh. It also improves shore sure footedness,
Speaker 1: which is something that might seem counterintuitive sometimes you think, oh,
Speaker 1: this kid's just spinning around in circles. You know, they're
Speaker 1: falling all over the place, they're gonna run into things.
Speaker 1: But it's actually helping them become more short surefooted. Uh.
Speaker 1: It has also been shown to improve concentration in the classroom,
Speaker 1: and they point out that a two thousand five study
Speaker 1: from Choir, Frick and Frick, two different fricks UH found
Speaker 1: that the centrifugal force of many spinning activities and experiences
Speaker 1: activate the fluid filled cavities in the inner ear. And
Speaker 1: these are sensors that help the brain orient the head
Speaker 1: quote which develops grounding and sustaining attention to task. And
Speaker 1: then overall it's a boost to the vestibular system, which
Speaker 1: controls balance, posture, gaze stabilization, and spatial orientation. And and
Speaker 1: there's also apparently a link to impulse control. Fun fact,
Speaker 1: right after I finished researching this section, I went off
Speaker 1: to get some coffee and was immediately attack by my
Speaker 1: son with imaginary lightsabers. And oh yeah, yeah, he has
Speaker 1: he has a pair that he he he really likes
Speaker 1: a sookatano and she has two, uh two lightsabers, so
Speaker 1: he's made two of them out of uh tinfoil um
Speaker 1: cardboard tubes and uh So, anyway, he was attacking me,
Speaker 1: and I observed quite a bit of spinning in his attacks,
Speaker 1: and I tried to do one spin and I nearly
Speaker 1: fell down, uh and then he cut my head off.
Speaker 1: But but but I I looked around and I've noticed
Speaker 1: that that there are actually lightsaber exercise classes for kids
Speaker 1: out there that they can do like virtually, and I'm
Speaker 1: tempted to sign him up for one, especially after learning
Speaker 1: more about the importance of spinning around in circles. That's genius.
Speaker 1: I would have done that as a kid. You have exercise,
Speaker 1: get that energy out. You just pretend to have a lightsaber.
Speaker 1: How has nobody thought of this before? Yeah, yeah, that's brilliant.
Speaker 1: I mean my my only hesitation is, uh, is, what
Speaker 1: what is it going to mean for the lamps and
Speaker 1: the televisions in your house? You gotta have a good
Speaker 1: space for that, I imagine. So let's come back to
Speaker 1: the adults. For for most of us, why does spinning
Speaker 1: around in circles make us dizzy? Why when a yoga
Speaker 1: instructor on a yoga video asked me to spin around
Speaker 1: just like three or five times, why did I have
Speaker 1: to lay down for like ten minutes after that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: This is funny because this is a question that I
Speaker 1: expected to have just a single, totally straightforward physiological answer,
Speaker 1: and instead I found a strange variety of answers to
Speaker 1: this question without a lot of acknowledgement that that there
Speaker 1: was variety in the ways people are answering this, so
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I've stumbled on something that's actually
Speaker 1: controversial or different uh different sources, or just emphasizing different
Speaker 1: aspects of vertigo induced by spinning. But in any case,
Speaker 1: the answer to this question definitely ended up taking a
Speaker 1: shape that I wouldn't expect. But before we get to
Speaker 1: the direct answer of like why spinning in circles makes
Speaker 1: you dizzy? I think we have to meet a fascinating
Speaker 1: and important element in this discussion. When you just mentioned
Speaker 1: a mintigo, which is the human vestibular system. Uh so interesting.
Speaker 1: Fact number one. We've talked about this on the show
Speaker 1: many times before, but maybe you're new the show. Humans
Speaker 1: actually have way more than five senses. I think it's
Speaker 1: funny when when people end up talking about the five senses.
Speaker 1: I guess you could maybe call them the big five senses.
Speaker 1: They're the most obvious as senses, you know, site, hearing, taste, smell, touch,
Speaker 1: But we have other ways of getting information from the
Speaker 1: outside world and coordinating that within the brain. And one
Speaker 1: of my favorite examples of a lesser known but extremely
Speaker 1: important sense distinct from the big five is appropriate reception.
Speaker 1: It's the sense that informs you where the different parts
Speaker 1: of your body are. So, how is it that you
Speaker 1: can type without looking at the keys? How is it
Speaker 1: that you can close your eyes and you still know
Speaker 1: where your hands are, You know whether they're at your
Speaker 1: sides or over your head, even if you're blindfolded. We
Speaker 1: have a sense that's constantly updating the brain with information
Speaker 1: about the position and orientation of the rest of the body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one that I can't help but feel that it's
Speaker 1: it's so invisible to us because it is so constant,
Speaker 1: it's not as easily disruptible, you know, in the sense
Speaker 1: that we can close our eyes, we can sort of
Speaker 1: stopper our ears and so forth. But but in terms
Speaker 1: of turning off appropriate reception, UM, not so easily done.
Speaker 1: And then also it's just so it's so close to us.
Speaker 1: It's you know, this is very much you can't see
Speaker 1: the forest for the trees situation. Yeah, uh yeah, that
Speaker 1: is very interesting. That's harder to turn that one off
Speaker 1: than it is some of the other senses. But in
Speaker 1: a way, I feel like that's part of the um.
Speaker 1: When people go for sort of like a sense deprivation
Speaker 1: or certain types of meditation that are that try to
Speaker 1: ignore sensory stimuli or just focus on one particular sensory stimuli.
Speaker 1: I think one of the difficult things is ignoring that
Speaker 1: feeling of where your body is, and that I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the important reasons why meditation often requires
Speaker 1: you to be in a position of rest, because it's
Speaker 1: easier to ignore the position of your body if you're
Speaker 1: not really doing anything active with your body. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and definitely it's the case with float tanks where if
Speaker 1: it's calibrated correctly, you're you're floating in water that's about
Speaker 1: the same temperature as your own body. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's about sort of losing a sense of of your
Speaker 1: physical self. Yeah, thank But they're all kinds of senses,
Speaker 1: some some bleed more easily into others, or you can
Speaker 1: make the argument that they do, like you can make
Speaker 1: arguments that they're different types of touch sensations, you know,
Speaker 1: feeling of tactile pressure versus feeling of heat. You know,
Speaker 1: you can talk about that. Another interesting one is chronoception,
Speaker 1: the sensation of the passing of time and judgment of duration.
Speaker 1: That actually is a sense of the external world, and
Speaker 1: there are types of nervous system conditions that can affect
Speaker 1: your chronoception. In fact, not just conditions as in diseases,
Speaker 1: but chronoception changes as you age, for example. But here's
Speaker 1: where things get even weirder. The ear is not only
Speaker 1: responsible for the sense of hearing. There are other senses
Speaker 1: that are located within the ear. Organs in the human
Speaker 1: inner ear are also responsible for one major component of equilibrioception,
Speaker 1: or the sense of balance, and these organs together in
Speaker 1: the inner ear, are known as the vestibular system. If
Speaker 1: you get a chance, you should look up an illustration
Speaker 1: of the human vestibular system. It is like a chambered
Speaker 1: nautilus or an alien squid snail. It's got one section
Speaker 1: which curls, and this is less related to the equilibrioception.
Speaker 1: That's the cochlea, the swirling snail shell part. But then
Speaker 1: coming out of the head of the swirling snail shell
Speaker 1: of the cochlea, there are these strange tentacle things, these
Speaker 1: three looping canals, each one like a semicircular tube snaking
Speaker 1: back on itself. And then you've also got these two
Speaker 1: tiny organs below the position down below the bases of
Speaker 1: these three semicircular canals. These two tiny organs are known
Speaker 1: as the utricle and the saccule, and together the utricle
Speaker 1: and the saccule are what's known as the odo lith organs,
Speaker 1: which literally means ear stones or ear rocks uh. Also
Speaker 1: in the realm of cool names. This whole complex of
Speaker 1: organs here is known as the labyrinth or the vestibular labyrinth,
Speaker 1: the bony labyrinth. You have one labyrinth in each ear. Now,
Speaker 1: if you go back to these hammer loop snake tentacles,
Speaker 1: the three semicircular canals, which each sort of loop in
Speaker 1: a different orientation, these things are hollow, partially filled with fluid,
Speaker 1: fluid and gel uh the gel known as cupula and
Speaker 1: the fluid known as indo lymph. And they include interior
Speaker 1: spaces with these little hair cells, these little follicles that
Speaker 1: are sensitive and connected to nerve tissue that runs out
Speaker 1: to the rest of the brain. So when you move
Speaker 1: your head, so you turn your head to the right
Speaker 1: or the left, or you tilt your head from side
Speaker 1: to side, or you tilt your head forward or back.
Speaker 1: Inside these loops, the fluid moves around in the canals
Speaker 1: in the inner spaces and it comes into contact with
Speaker 1: the different hair cells, and the hair cells since the
Speaker 1: movement of this fluid, and this can give you information
Speaker 1: about the orientation of your head. And the hair cells
Speaker 1: are connected to the brain via a nerve fiber called
Speaker 1: the vestibular nerve, and then the brain interprets the stimulation
Speaker 1: data from those hair cells into sense information about the
Speaker 1: orientation of the head. And the main part of the
Speaker 1: brain involved in processing coordinating information about balance and movement
Speaker 1: is the cerebellum, which, if you've seen an illustration of
Speaker 1: the brain, is that little meaty lump position on the
Speaker 1: rear underside of the brain is kind of the brains,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of right at the top of the
Speaker 1: spinal column. So everybody feel your brain and and and
Speaker 1: you'll you'll feel it. Get your get your hand right
Speaker 1: in there. Now. About these canals in the labyrinth, one
Speaker 1: thing that I think is really cool is that, Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's one canal that is devoted to sensing the
Speaker 1: tilting of the head forward or backward. There is another
Speaker 1: canal that's devoted to sensing the turning of the head
Speaker 1: from side to side, and then there's another that is
Speaker 1: dedicated to sensing the tilting of the head toward each shoulder.
Speaker 1: And so what you can realize is that these three
Speaker 1: canals represent the three different dimensions of space. So if
Speaker 1: I'm understanding correctly, I think I am. These three canals
Speaker 1: also correspond to the three attitude variables of aircraft and submarines,
Speaker 1: which are role, pitch, and yaw. So what mammal heads
Speaker 1: and B fifty twos have in common is that they
Speaker 1: live in three dimensional space. And if you're going to
Speaker 1: adjust movements through three dimensional space, and since uh all
Speaker 1: the different ways that you can change your attitude or
Speaker 1: change the vector along which you're moving, then you need
Speaker 1: a sensor for one of each of these three dimensions. Interesting, Rob,
Speaker 1: I know you're a big fan of of airplanes. Do
Speaker 1: do you ever think about your body in terms of role,
Speaker 1: pitch and y'all? Uh No, you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: I have, though, it's it's certainly now that you may
Speaker 1: bring it up here. It's it's making me think back
Speaker 1: to like flight simulator games, you know, where you you
Speaker 1: definitely have visual displays of role, pitch and y'all, But
Speaker 1: we don't think about that in terms of our own
Speaker 1: personal experience of physical reality. I mean, we are babies
Speaker 1: of the three D space, so it governs man and
Speaker 1: machine alike. Now, earlier I also mentioned these otolith organs.
Speaker 1: They also have sensitive hair cells, but the sensitive hair
Speaker 1: cells here are arrayed with strange mineral formations made out
Speaker 1: of calcium carbonate again, hence otolith the name ear stones
Speaker 1: or ear rocks, and calcium carbonate is the same compound
Speaker 1: that makes up the bulk of the shells of sea
Speaker 1: creatures and pearls, but also chalk. It's a very widespread,
Speaker 1: widely found mineral. Uh. It's used in tons of human technology.
Speaker 1: It's used in for example, agricultural lime, uh to make
Speaker 1: chalk for a blackboard, all kinds of things. But I
Speaker 1: also found one totally off topic connection that I couldn't
Speaker 1: bear not to mention, and that is that there's one
Speaker 1: common stable crystal form of calcium carbonate known as calcite,
Speaker 1: and there is one very strange and beautiful form of
Speaker 1: calcite known as iceland spar, which is a transparent rock.
Speaker 1: It's a mineral that is clear like ice or like
Speaker 1: slightly you know, uh, slightly jacked up glass. And it's
Speaker 1: been speculated that this transparent crystal Iceland. Spar was actually
Speaker 1: the historical reference point for an object that is recorded
Speaker 1: in medieval histories known as the sunstone, and their references
Speaker 1: to this in medieval Norse texts. I think we're talking
Speaker 1: about Iceland because this crystal can be used to detect
Speaker 1: the direction of the sun when you're sailing in the
Speaker 1: Arctic and the sun is totally obscured by clouds, so
Speaker 1: you're out, it's a gray day. You can't see where
Speaker 1: the sun is at all, but you need to know
Speaker 1: where the sun is in order to navigate your boat.
Speaker 1: You can apparently use a chunk of this transparent crystal
Speaker 1: to find the location of the sun by by the
Speaker 1: crystal's effect on the polarized light coming from the sun
Speaker 1: through the clouds. Oh fascinating, Yeah, because I think we've
Speaker 1: all been saying out on the beach perhaps on one
Speaker 1: of these days where it's overcast, you know the sun's
Speaker 1: up there, but you're not exactly sure what position it's in. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So calcium carbonate itself is just a very versatile and
Speaker 1: mini splendored mineral uh on on its own. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's the subject of a of a great classic talk
Speaker 1: in science, the talk about a piece of chalk that
Speaker 1: was given by by T. H. Huxley. But but I
Speaker 1: also included a picture for you to look at here, rob,
Speaker 1: which is a scanning electron micrograph that I found of
Speaker 1: calcium carbonate crystals from the from the utricle of a cat.
Speaker 1: And so it's showing these tiny crystals. Each one is
Speaker 1: microscopically small, but yeah, they these rocks. Basically, these crystals
Speaker 1: play a role in the physiology and function of the
Speaker 1: inner ear. Now, what these odo lith organs do that's
Speaker 1: different from the semicircular canals is that the odoliths detect
Speaker 1: vectors of acceleration horizontal and vertical. And so this is
Speaker 1: why you can feel whether you are going up or
Speaker 1: down in an elevator even though you can't see out
Speaker 1: of it. So in an elevator, you're not changing the
Speaker 1: orientation of your head. You know, you're not bending it
Speaker 1: forward or whatever. The head is staying fixed relative to
Speaker 1: to gravity basically, but you are moving, You're going up
Speaker 1: and down, and so the saccula in there can detect that.
Speaker 1: So we're left with this really strange fact inside your
Speaker 1: ears you have tiny organs lined with crystals of the
Speaker 1: material that makes oyster shells and pearls, and they detect
Speaker 1: which directions you're accelerating in even if you can't see,
Speaker 1: which I thought was just a beautiful connection. The crystalline
Speaker 1: new a genus of the inner ear. Oh, that'd be great.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of that one. And people who like
Speaker 1: give their friends crystals for like certain healing powers or something.
Speaker 1: What are the crystals of the human inner ear do
Speaker 1: if you like slay your enemies and take the crystals
Speaker 1: out of their ears. Oh, man, that would be a
Speaker 1: great Uh. That would be a great function of some
Speaker 1: sort of like alien invasion story where the alien has
Speaker 1: to feed on on on these crystals, you know. I
Speaker 1: was also I didn't get super deep into this because
Speaker 1: it's kind of a tangent, But I was also just
Speaker 1: looking at studies indicating the many faces of of a
Speaker 1: healthy odo lith and what it does for the body.
Speaker 1: For example, one study I was looking at mission the
Speaker 1: possibility that auto liths are possibly important for the formation
Speaker 1: of spatial memories, and that the degradation of the effectiveness
Speaker 1: of the odo lith oysters may account for the decline
Speaker 1: of spatial memory with age. So as you get older
Speaker 1: and the oyster shells in your ears, the odo liths
Speaker 1: become a little bit less good at what they do,
Speaker 1: and this actually could be related to people being less
Speaker 1: accurate at forming spatial memories as they get older. Interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's certainly there's the brain itself, but the brain
Speaker 1: has to make use of sensory information. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: ties into stuff we've talked about before in how um.
Speaker 1: In some ways the brain remembers spaces by simulating movement
Speaker 1: but through them. But the vestibular system is also, it
Speaker 1: should be mentioned, a team player. So these canals and
Speaker 1: the odoliths, they don't have much use alone, but rather
Speaker 1: they coordinate information in the brain with other sensory systems,
Speaker 1: such as the visual system appropriate receptive faculties to form
Speaker 1: a comprehensive movement detection and feedback and adjustment system. And
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of stuff that has to happen like uh,
Speaker 1: For example, your visual system adjusts itself to account for
Speaker 1: changes in the movement and orientation of your body that
Speaker 1: are sensed by the vestibular system, and so the eyes
Speaker 1: can see your orientation with respect to the environment. The
Speaker 1: vestibular system, since it is the head's orientation, movement with
Speaker 1: respect to gravity and to inertia. The appropriate receptive system
Speaker 1: feels where the rest of the body is in relation
Speaker 1: to the head. These systems, I'll kind of have to
Speaker 1: work together to to give you a picture of here's
Speaker 1: where your body is and how it's moving. And so
Speaker 1: when we come back to the question of dizziness and vertigo, uh,
Speaker 1: I guess that's addressing what happens when these systems get
Speaker 1: out of synchronization with each other, or when one of
Speaker 1: the systems begins to fail or have problems. And so
Speaker 1: to ask the question like what is dizziness, that's also
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting question because there are a range
Speaker 1: of different sensations that people call dizziness that they're all
Speaker 1: kind of associated with one another. So, for example, I
Speaker 1: was reading a paper called Dizziness and Vertigo Syndromes Viewed
Speaker 1: with a Historical Eye by Dorin Hoopert and Thomas Brandt
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Neurology published in and they cite
Speaker 1: a definition of dizziness and vertigo from the International Barani
Speaker 1: Society of neuro Autology, and they say, quote, vertigo is
Speaker 1: the sensation of self motion when no self motion is
Speaker 1: occurring dizziness is the sensation of disturbed or impaired spatial
Speaker 1: orientation without a false or distorted sense of motion. And
Speaker 1: imbalance or unsteadiness is the feeling of being unstable while sitting, standing,
Speaker 1: or walking without a particular directional preference. But I gotta
Speaker 1: say so, so that may be applied at the clinical
Speaker 1: level or in the in the literature, but it's clear
Speaker 1: that when people talk about dizziness, a lot of times
Speaker 1: what they're talking about here is vertigo. Right, It is
Speaker 1: the sense that you are spinning or moving when you're not.
Speaker 1: And though a lot of sources I was reading said
Speaker 1: the sense that you're moving when you're not, to be pedantic,
Speaker 1: I think technically what you'd really have to say is
Speaker 1: it's the sense that you're accelerating, not the sense that
Speaker 1: you're moving, because once you're moving at a constant speed
Speaker 1: and direction, movement is imperceptible. It's only changes in speed
Speaker 1: or direction that that are sensed in the inner ear.
Speaker 1: But I think you have to correct about how we
Speaker 1: just we we tend to refer to things as dizziness
Speaker 1: or feeling dizzy, even if we're talking about vertico, etcetera. Right, So,
Speaker 1: I think a more you know, street level definition that
Speaker 1: people would use I found on the Mayo Clinic website. Uh.
Speaker 1: They say, dizziness is a term used to describe a
Speaker 1: range of sensations such as feeling faint, woozy, weak, or unsteady.
Speaker 1: Dizziness that creates the false sense that you or your
Speaker 1: surroundings are spinning or moving is called vertigo. Uh. So
Speaker 1: these terms might be used differently in the literature sometimes,
Speaker 1: but I think we can basically say, you know, dizziness vertigo.
Speaker 1: We're we're sort of talking about the same thing and
Speaker 1: related things. Now, that same paper I just mentioned, the
Speaker 1: one by Dorian Hoopert and Thomas Brandt in the Journal
Speaker 1: of Neurology, Uh, it has a section where it looked into,
Speaker 1: uh the etymology of terms used for dizziness, which which
Speaker 1: I thought was actually extremely interesting and revealing. So in
Speaker 1: this part of their paper they say, uh quote Latin
Speaker 1: for example, has it lee two source words to describe
Speaker 1: the condition vertigo. Vertigo in Latin refers to turning, spinning, rotating,
Speaker 1: and is derived from the verb vertere, meaning to turn.
Speaker 1: Another word, caligo means darkening of the eyes, funereal crape,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a cloth that would be placed
Speaker 1: over a over a body at a funeral and and dizziness,
Speaker 1: So strange, darkening of the eyes, the cloth over the
Speaker 1: over the body at a funeral, and dizziness. And they
Speaker 1: say that this word caligo and not the word vertigo,
Speaker 1: appears in ancient text passages referring to heights and the
Speaker 1: symptoms of a fear of heights. So you know, often
Speaker 1: people will feel vertigo or dizziness if they've got a
Speaker 1: fear of heights and they you know, look off of
Speaker 1: a cliff for something. But they say that collego was
Speaker 1: also used quote metaphorically for dizziness arising from feelings of
Speaker 1: exultation or for being overwhelmed and losing one's grip on reality.
Speaker 1: For example, Tacitus in his work History A describes how
Speaker 1: Vespasian wanted to become an emperor himself after Nero's suicide.
Speaker 1: He is said to have felt dizzy when the soldiers
Speaker 1: addressed him as emperor and used other high ranking titles. Interesting.
Speaker 1: But then this next piece of etymology I thought was
Speaker 1: also really interesting. They say the word giddy is believed
Speaker 1: to be derived from the Old English word giddig, meaning
Speaker 1: insane or literally possessed by a god. The Oxford English
Speaker 1: Dictionary defines the word dizzy as having or involving a
Speaker 1: sensation of spinning around and losing one's balance. It is
Speaker 1: said to originate from the Old English word disig, meaning foolish,
Speaker 1: and is thought to be related to the Low German
Speaker 1: do sig, meaning giddy, and the old High German tusig,
Speaker 1: which relates, which translates as foolish or weak. So really
Speaker 1: interesting this this ancient um historical association between insanity and
Speaker 1: being possessed by a god with the with the feeling
Speaker 1: of dizziness. But okay, anyway to look at the question
Speaker 1: of what's actually happening in the body when you spin
Speaker 1: around in circles and become dizzy? Uh So, first of all,
Speaker 1: I have to say I could not find a single
Speaker 1: authoritative scientific paper that really looks directly at this question.
Speaker 1: There are some studies that, uh look at dizziness from
Speaker 1: a question of like things that can be done to
Speaker 1: alleviate it. But if there's a paper that just looks
Speaker 1: at what causes dizziness and spinning, I was not able
Speaker 1: to find that. Yet, maybe maybe it's out there somewhere
Speaker 1: and somebody can find it and send it our way.
Speaker 1: I did find a number of articles on popular scientific websites,
Speaker 1: but again these articles were somewhat in disagreement with each other,
Speaker 1: without any acknowledgement that they were citing different explanations. So
Speaker 1: one example that I found in a number of articles
Speaker 1: had to do with the effects of inertia on the
Speaker 1: fluid in the can owls in the inner ear. Now,
Speaker 1: this is an article. This is from an article on
Speaker 1: Live Science by Natalie Wolkover, and the author here writes
Speaker 1: that quote when you spin in a circle, inertia initially
Speaker 1: causes the indo lymph. Remember that's the fluid in the
Speaker 1: inner ears that moves around to stimulate those hair cells,
Speaker 1: and that allows your body to detect orientation of the
Speaker 1: head and motion. Uh. She says, Inertia initially causes the
Speaker 1: indo lymph to slosh in the direction opposite of your
Speaker 1: head's motion. It resists the movement of your head dragging
Speaker 1: the cupula. And again that's the slower moving gel that's
Speaker 1: in there backwards with it and thus causing the sensory
Speaker 1: hair suspended inside the cupula to bend against the direction
Speaker 1: in which you're spinning. However, within moments, the indo lymph
Speaker 1: and thus the more gelatinous cupula, adjust to the movement
Speaker 1: of your head and start going with the flow. This
Speaker 1: causes the hair cells to straighten, and your brain no
Speaker 1: longer receives the message that you're spinning. Your perception has
Speaker 1: become normalized, the rotation of your head, giving you the
Speaker 1: sense that you are still and the world is rotating
Speaker 1: around you. Okay, So that would sort of pair up
Speaker 1: with the understanding of dizziness that it is the sensation
Speaker 1: of motion even when you are not moving right, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm no longer spinning around in circles. I've stopped, but
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm spinning around in circles and therefore
Speaker 1: I have to lay down. Yeah, and from a first
Speaker 1: person perspective, I would say that is part of the
Speaker 1: sensation of dizziness. Uh, though dizziness might also be more
Speaker 1: than that. Um. But but of course, then when you
Speaker 1: stop spinning wulkover rights, you have halted the rotation of
Speaker 1: your semicircular canals, and because of inertia, the indo lymph
Speaker 1: keeps spinning, and so it's kind of the way that
Speaker 1: you know you can spin a bucket around. But then
Speaker 1: if you stop spinning the bucket, the water in the
Speaker 1: bucket will keep spinning, it will keep slashing um, she writes.
Speaker 1: Because of inertia, the indo lymph keeps spinning, resisting change.
Speaker 1: Yet again, as fluid continues to move, it once again
Speaker 1: deflects the cupula, this time in the direction in which
Speaker 1: you were spinning moments before. And as the using cupula
Speaker 1: bends those hair cells, a signal of movement is transmitted
Speaker 1: to the brain you since you are moving but you're not,
Speaker 1: And that's dizziness. Okay, So you know, based on the
Speaker 1: other things I've been reading, that explanation would make some
Speaker 1: amount of sense. It's saying that the effects of inertia
Speaker 1: on the fluid in the canals in the inner ear
Speaker 1: after you stop spinning, causes some kind of you know, uh,
Speaker 1: causes some false signals in the brain. And this is disorienting,
Speaker 1: especially when paired with your other senses, like your eyes
Speaker 1: and everything are telling you you're not spinning anymore, but
Speaker 1: your inner ear feels like you are. Yeah, the slough
Speaker 1: bladders in our in our head and are all sloshed
Speaker 1: up basically, and this is mirrored in another article I
Speaker 1: was I found on the subject, one in Popular Science
Speaker 1: by Claire Muldarelli, again referencing the movement of the indo
Speaker 1: lymph in the cupula. Uh Multirelli writes, quote, the problem
Speaker 1: comes when you stop. Your muscles are able to start
Speaker 1: and stop really quickly without any issues, but that fluid
Speaker 1: doesn't work as fast. Even though you stopped, the fluid
Speaker 1: is still moving and it takes some time for it
Speaker 1: to finally stop. While it's still moving, those hairs are
Speaker 1: still picking up on the motion and sending signals saying
Speaker 1: I'm moving to the brain. The brain receives the signal,
Speaker 1: but at the same time knows the body is perfectly still.
Speaker 1: And the same explanation about the the inertial effects of
Speaker 1: the moving indo lymph within the canals in the brain
Speaker 1: or in the in the in the interear. This is
Speaker 1: also mirrored in the House Stuff Works article that I
Speaker 1: found on the subject. Is basically, the indo lymph keeps
Speaker 1: moving after you stop spinning. This confuses the brain. While
Speaker 1: these explanations so I found this across multiple sources, it
Speaker 1: does seem to sort of make sense. But if this
Speaker 1: is true, one thing I wonder about is why is
Speaker 1: it that spinning in particular is liable to make you dizzy?
Speaker 1: And why not other type of movement couldn't other types
Speaker 1: of movement apart from spinning also cause you know, inertial
Speaker 1: drag in the fluids in your inner ears, and that
Speaker 1: your body would stop moving before the fluid stops moving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good question, I am, you know, based on
Speaker 1: some of the stuff will discuss I think mostly in
Speaker 1: the next episode. It does make me think about the
Speaker 1: frequency of of use when it comes to spins, you know, um,
Speaker 1: like in terms of just straight up acceleration and deceleration, uh,
Speaker 1: in our daily lives, Like we might not be running
Speaker 1: marathons and passing batons all that much, but we are
Speaker 1: still accelerating and decelerating fairly regularly. Whereas the spin especially
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of spins that we think about,
Speaker 1: uh and and experience related to dizziness, those are not
Speaker 1: going to necessarily be a regular part of your daily life,
Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, it could be a it could be
Speaker 1: a conditioning thing, and the conditioning thing would actually tie
Speaker 1: into something that we're going to talk about in a
Speaker 1: bit when we get into how like dancers and and
Speaker 1: ice skaters supposedly deal with this. But before we get
Speaker 1: into that, I wanted to mention the other explanations I
Speaker 1: came across um for for why we get dizzy when
Speaker 1: we spin in circles, and specifically, these other explanations are
Speaker 1: based in the brain's constant attempt to coordinate vestibular information
Speaker 1: with visual information from the eyes specifically, So this is
Speaker 1: from an explainer I found written in Scientific American written
Speaker 1: by Amir Karadmond, who is a neurologist with Johns Hopkins Medicine,
Speaker 1: and Kadmond has has this different explanation. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: if we rotate our head to the right while our
Speaker 1: eyes remain focused on an object straight ahead, our eyes
Speaker 1: naturally moved to the left at the same speed. This
Speaker 1: involuntary response allows us to stay focused on a stationary object.
Speaker 1: And this is really physiologically important, right, Like, for the
Speaker 1: body to function, you need to be able to keep
Speaker 1: focused on something while you're moving around, you know, otherwise
Speaker 1: it would be really difficult to like hunt or fight
Speaker 1: or you know, do anything like that if you can't
Speaker 1: stay focused even while your body is moving. So the
Speaker 1: eyes adjust as as the body moves um, but Karadmon
Speaker 1: continues quote. Spinning is more complicated. When we move our
Speaker 1: head during a spin, our eyes start to move in
Speaker 1: the opposite direction, but reach their limit before our head
Speaker 1: completes a full three and sixty degree turn, So our
Speaker 1: eyes flick back to a new starting position mid spin,
Speaker 1: and the motion repeats as we rotate. When our head
Speaker 1: rotation triggers this automatic repetitive eye movement called nastagmus, we
Speaker 1: get dizzy. Uh so nastagmus again. Yeah, it's this repetitive
Speaker 1: jerking around of the eyes UM and nastagmus can be
Speaker 1: triggered by certain kinds of stimuli, Like if you show
Speaker 1: people a rotating drum that has stripes painted on it,
Speaker 1: you can trigger na stagmas as the eye tries to
Speaker 1: track the fast moving stripes as as they go past. Um.
Speaker 1: But another interesting fact I found is that nastagmus plays
Speaker 1: an important role in the arsenal of field sobriety tests
Speaker 1: used by law enforcement. So the normal procedure for this
Speaker 1: is if you know a police officers trying to do
Speaker 1: a field sobriety test on somebody they've pulled over, they
Speaker 1: will ask them to hold their heads still, and then
Speaker 1: they will ask the subject to follow a moving stimulus
Speaker 1: with their eyes without moving their head. And then you
Speaker 1: move the stimulus steadily, sort of in an arc around
Speaker 1: towards the person's side, and as they follow it with
Speaker 1: their eyes. Supposedly there are types of nastagmus, or these
Speaker 1: repetitive jerking movements of the eyes that are usually indicative
Speaker 1: of intoxication. Though I should note that just in poking
Speaker 1: around a little bit, it looks like there's some controversy
Speaker 1: over the reliability of this test. And it's used by police. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like you have a tricorder type
Speaker 1: device that you hold up and and scan the eyes.
Speaker 1: It's based on what the police officer is observing and
Speaker 1: then reporting regarding the movement the the the slight movements
Speaker 1: of the individual's eyes. Right. And so this is interesting
Speaker 1: because I feel like now we've got at least two
Speaker 1: different explanations. In fact, this would be getting into a
Speaker 1: whole other cannon worms. I found another explanation in a
Speaker 1: very short explainer article uh for the BBC by a
Speaker 1: by a zoologist and science communicator who who framed their
Speaker 1: explanation more in terms of the brain getting desensitized to
Speaker 1: spinning input and then deciding to ignore it. And then
Speaker 1: when you stop spinning, the canceling out it has had
Speaker 1: to do of the spinning input is uh is suddenly
Speaker 1: counterproductive and makes you think the body is still moving.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ignore that one for now and look
Speaker 1: at these other main two explanations. So one is about
Speaker 1: the inertia of the fluids in the canals in the
Speaker 1: inner ear as as you spin around, and and that
Speaker 1: inertia calling a feeling of spinning even after the body
Speaker 1: has stopped spinning. The other is UH is about this
Speaker 1: very different thing about what's happening with the eyes when
Speaker 1: you spin around. And so I actually I was like,
Speaker 1: maybe I can get some insight onto which of these
Speaker 1: is correct uh. Though though I guess one thing I
Speaker 1: should say is that these explanations are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Speaker 1: I mean, it could be that both of these things
Speaker 1: contribute to dizziness. UM. But I wanted to get some
Speaker 1: insight on this by experimenting on myself. I was actually
Speaker 1: lying in bed last night thinking about this, trying to
Speaker 1: sort out like why these two different explanations have come across,
Speaker 1: which one could be correct or more correct, and I
Speaker 1: decided I had to get up out of bed and
Speaker 1: spin around to test this out. So um so I
Speaker 1: recognized this experiment is just on me. I just did
Speaker 1: it once. This is not going to pass peer review.
Speaker 1: This is not scientifically rigorous, but it was at least
Speaker 1: interesting to me. So what what I did was I
Speaker 1: tried spinning around for twelve revolutions uh boat in two
Speaker 1: different conditions, one with my eyes closed so i'd be
Speaker 1: unlikely to experience na stagmas, and one with my eyes
Speaker 1: open so I would be and I was trying to
Speaker 1: go to constant speed. I tried to keep the number
Speaker 1: of revolutions the same for for each test condition um
Speaker 1: and and have the only thing different being whether my
Speaker 1: eyes were open or closed. So I will say I
Speaker 1: felt dizzy after both spinning sessions, but I felt significantly
Speaker 1: worse significantly dizzy or after the one with my eyes open.
Speaker 1: Though it's complicated because that was the second one I did,
Speaker 1: so there could also be cumulative effects. I tried to
Speaker 1: rest in between them, but I didn't rest that long,
Speaker 1: and so there could have been cumulative effects where it
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily that spinning with the eyes open is worse,
Speaker 1: but just that I spun around in circles twenty four
Speaker 1: times recently instead of twelve times after that one. So
Speaker 1: the other thing is I really really do not recommend
Speaker 1: spinning in circle twenty four times before bed I was
Speaker 1: lying there feeling pretty gross. Yeah, yeah, definitely. As you
Speaker 1: listen to these episodes, you're going to want to try
Speaker 1: a little bit of spinning. That's understandable, and we encouraged that.
Speaker 1: But please be careful, Please be careful spinning. Uh and
Speaker 1: you know, realize that you will probably become dizzy and you,
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't want to suffer a fall or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Yeah. Uh So I don't think my
Speaker 1: my personal experiment really settled the question, and it could
Speaker 1: be their confounding varials variables. But I did find that
Speaker 1: at least seemed possible to me that having your eyes
Speaker 1: open during spinning makes the dizziness issue significantly worse than
Speaker 1: than spinning with the eyes closed, which would seem to
Speaker 1: lend some credence to the explanation offered by Karadmond that
Speaker 1: it has something to do with the movement of the eyes.
Speaker 1: But like I said, it could be the case that
Speaker 1: actually both of these things contribute to dizziness, and they
Speaker 1: were just emphasizing different aspects of why we get dizzy
Speaker 1: from spinning. Though, there's another idea that I that I got.
Speaker 1: I guess maybe a hypothesis that my experiment brought up,
Speaker 1: which is, what if dizziness from spinning is strongly influenced
Speaker 1: by the amount of time spent spinning as opposed to
Speaker 1: just the number of rotations. So if we're, you know,
Speaker 1: in a minute, we're going to talk about like ballerinas
Speaker 1: and skaters, you would have to think that if a
Speaker 1: skater does ten turns really fast, as as opposed to
Speaker 1: me doing you know, ten or twelve turns pretty slow
Speaker 1: standing in my bedroom. Uh, is that you know that
Speaker 1: the skater would have it worse. But but maybe it's
Speaker 1: actually worse to be spinning for a longer period of
Speaker 1: time slower than a shorter period of time really fast.
Speaker 1: Thank well, all right, let's let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the art of spinning, particularly as it relates to
Speaker 1: ballet dancers and figure skaters. So certainly both of these
Speaker 1: involve a fair amount of spinning around in circles. They
Speaker 1: are the most amazing examples figure skaters, ballerinas balot ballet
Speaker 1: dancers whose feats of spinning athletics are certainly enough to
Speaker 1: cause feelings of a vertigo in the viewer, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: and yet we don't see these individuals tremendously affected. You know,
Speaker 1: like like if of a dancer, does you know a
Speaker 1: really impressive pirouette, Uh, they don't immediately fall onto the floor,
Speaker 1: or at least that's not supposed to happen. Um. The
Speaker 1: same goes for figure skaters, Right, they do some phenomenal
Speaker 1: spin and then they're out informed to continue their routine, right,
Speaker 1: I mean so if I spinning around slowly like twelve times,
Speaker 1: have to stumble to my bed afterwards? Yeah? What how
Speaker 1: do how do you continue a a really difficult intricate
Speaker 1: you know, executing dance moves or or or continuing to skate?
Speaker 1: I mean skating alone is difficult enough, right with your
Speaker 1: balance thrown off like it like you would think it
Speaker 1: should be after one of those spinning moves. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and yet they're not. And what it basically seems to
Speaker 1: come down to is that they've essentially trained their brains
Speaker 1: not to pay as much attention to the input from
Speaker 1: from the vestibular system, so not to be thrown off
Speaker 1: by the signals coming in. And this is something that
Speaker 1: that comes through just continual practice and the ratcheting up
Speaker 1: of your sort of spinning tolerance. Yeah, this seems to
Speaker 1: be what I was reading as well. It's it seems
Speaker 1: to be one of the main explanations is just conditioning.
Speaker 1: It's like practice and conditioning of the brain to not
Speaker 1: get as thrown off by the vestibular system's response to spinning. Right,
Speaker 1: And it's and and that's not to discount it. It's
Speaker 1: like it's really impressive. I was looking at a paper
Speaker 1: about this two thousand thirteen Imperial College London study published
Speaker 1: in the journal Cerebrial Cortex by the by Nigga Enigma
Speaker 1: Tolina at All, and it was looking at why dancers
Speaker 1: don't get dizzy. So what they did is they looked
Speaker 1: at twenty nine female dancers and twenty female age matched
Speaker 1: controls with no dancing experience. And this is we see
Speaker 1: this in another study we'll talk about in the second episode,
Speaker 1: where basically you have your expert spinners and your control
Speaker 1: group is gonna consist of people who are more or
Speaker 1: less comparable individuals just without that spinning experience, without that
Speaker 1: dancing experience in this case. So they took these individuals
Speaker 1: and they put them through a series of spinning tests
Speaker 1: in a chair in a dark room. Um. Then they
Speaker 1: measured the brains of the two groups and how the
Speaker 1: volunteers reacted to the spinning, and they found that the
Speaker 1: dancers recovered faster than the non dancers. Basically, the dancers
Speaker 1: brains have adapted over years of training to suppress the
Speaker 1: input that causes dizziness. It's a case of training related
Speaker 1: brain plasticity. It's the sort of thing that uh, you know,
Speaker 1: could one day be used to actually treat other conditions.
Speaker 1: Knowledge of this could be used to treat other conditions
Speaker 1: and enhance our understanding of how the brain heals itself. Now,
Speaker 1: many ballet dancers, including those used in the study, use
Speaker 1: something called spotting in their training. Yeah, that explained by
Speaker 1: Karadmond mentions this that uh I think more so for
Speaker 1: ballet dancers than for ice skaters. Uh Yes, having to
Speaker 1: do with the speed of the rotation. But the ballet
Speaker 1: dancers use this trick of how they move the head
Speaker 1: and focus the vision to prevent them being overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: nastagmus was the reason he cited for it, right. I
Speaker 1: believe this is pretty well presented in I mean you
Speaker 1: can you can see it in dance and if you
Speaker 1: are like me and most of your ballet experience these
Speaker 1: days comes from watching ballet horror movies like The Two
Speaker 1: Suspirias and Black Swan, and then you know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, Like, it's really, you know, interesting to watch
Speaker 1: the way their head seems to like swing back around
Speaker 1: to the same position as their body spins. You focus
Speaker 1: as the dancer, you focus your eyes on one area
Speaker 1: in front of you as you spin around over and
Speaker 1: over again, and this helps you stay steady. You keep
Speaker 1: moving your head around to the same point while the
Speaker 1: body spins. But the authors in this particular studies say
Speaker 1: that that spotting alone isn't enough to account for the ability.
Speaker 1: And likewise, as you mentioned, figure skaters don't really do spotting,
Speaker 1: not exactly. So basically there's figure skaters are spinning way
Speaker 1: too fast for one thing. So I've read that some
Speaker 1: figure skaters do use a form of spotting to count
Speaker 1: their revolutions. So just just counting how many times a
Speaker 1: particular spot on the ice passes you buy uh. They
Speaker 1: may also instantly focus on something as they come out
Speaker 1: of an intense spin in order to get their bearing straight.
Speaker 1: But as with ballet dancers, figure skaters simply get used
Speaker 1: to the spin. I was reading that they they only
Speaker 1: really feel dizzy when they start upping their spin levels
Speaker 1: and training, but then their their bodies their minds adjust
Speaker 1: to that as well. Okay, so it sounds like it's
Speaker 1: not just like there is a trick to not feeling
Speaker 1: dizzy from spinning. It's there are tricks like spotting, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't fully explain it. A lot of it's probably
Speaker 1: just conditioning. It's just this, right, the more you spin,
Speaker 1: the more your your brain becomes a customed to this
Speaker 1: input and realizes, yeah, the spinning is what we do.
Speaker 1: This is we can. We can. It basically acclimatizes to
Speaker 1: the spinning reality. It makes me wonder if you could,
Speaker 1: you know, create a generation of like super ballerinas or
Speaker 1: super skaters by by bringing them up from from infancy
Speaker 1: in an environment where they're deeply desensitized to like different
Speaker 1: types of vestibular disorientation, like if you maybe if you
Speaker 1: raise them in space or something. Um well, I mean,
Speaker 1: on one hand, I feel like what you just described
Speaker 1: it and seem that far from like the really hardcore
Speaker 1: world of of professional dance, right, like just start conditioning
Speaker 1: them very young. But on the space question, uh, I
Speaker 1: looked that up as well. You know, can you get
Speaker 1: Disney and Space? I mean, what does dizziness and space
Speaker 1: consists of? And I found an Avery Thompson piece and
Speaker 1: popular Mechanics. They discussed this citing personal experiments, um you
Speaker 1: know personal um, you know, informal experien moments performed by
Speaker 1: astronaut Tim Peak. And basically it's a case again of
Speaker 1: of of the brain adapting. In this case, the brain
Speaker 1: adapting to the initial feeling of spinning that one experiences
Speaker 1: in low gravity, and the brain adapts to this change,
Speaker 1: and then it's very difficult to feel dizzy, um Peak says,
Speaker 1: unless sudden acceleration is involved. I think this was the
Speaker 1: ultimate plan of that guy from Moonraker. He wanted to
Speaker 1: let you know what he was like going to sterilize
Speaker 1: the Earth or kill all the humans, and he's like
Speaker 1: moved all of his beloved people up to the to
Speaker 1: the space station. Clearly he's trying to create a generation
Speaker 1: of super ballerinas to rule the post apocalyptic earth. Oh man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Moonraker so good. I feel like Moonraker is probably good. Uh,
Speaker 1: the one Bond film we could do for weird house cinema,
Speaker 1: like it's the it's the weirdest. Yeah, I think you're right. Well, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe that last pierced Bras in the
Speaker 1: movie with the Invisible car and the castle made of ice,
Speaker 1: that that's Oh I never saw that one, but I yeah,
Speaker 1: I have heard it has some pretty bonker elements to it.
Speaker 1: It's up there with Moonraker for for weirdness. Those are
Speaker 1: the two goodest ones. All right, Well, again, this was
Speaker 1: part one. We're gonna come back for part two, and
Speaker 1: in part two we're going to discuss, among other things,
Speaker 1: um meditative states in spinning. We're gonna we're gonna discuss
Speaker 1: the Sufi whirling uh Sufi mysticism and uh and the
Speaker 1: spinning that is involved in that and in a particular
Speaker 1: study that looks at at it. Uh. So we hope
Speaker 1: that you will come back for that episode. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, you can find us wherever you
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Speaker 1: can find did there. Huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
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