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Speaker 1: My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of

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Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 1: today we're gonna be talking about spinning around in circles.

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Speaker 1: That's right, this is This is probably gonna be a

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Speaker 1: two parter. Sometimes we figure this out as we go,

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Speaker 1: but I believe this will be a part one in

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Speaker 1: a part two, and we're gonna be We're gonna be

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Speaker 1: looking at at humans spinning around in circles from several

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Speaker 1: different vantage points. You know, what is it doing? Uh

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Speaker 1: at a at a biological level, Uh, you know, a

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Speaker 1: psychological level. Um, how does it factor into various traditions

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Speaker 1: and games, etcetera. Um, this is what I'm pretty excited

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Speaker 1: to do. And the genesis for this one was a

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Speaker 1: listener email who wrote in about about spinning in um

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Speaker 1: in ballet, and we were we we had a brief

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Speaker 1: back and forth in a listener mail of where we

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Speaker 1: talked about then we're like, yeah, we should totally do

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Speaker 1: an up. So, so here we are. But to start off,

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Speaker 1: I want to I want to start off somewhere where

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Speaker 1: at least my mind went to if not first, then

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Speaker 1: maybe second or third, and that is the world of

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Speaker 1: of of fantasy. Combat has found in science fiction and

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Speaker 1: fantasy films, but also especially in the video games, because

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Speaker 1: when I think of people spinning, I have to say,

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Speaker 1: I instantly think of im Bison from Street Fighter doing

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Speaker 1: his psycho crusher attack. Do you remember this one, Joe?

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Speaker 1: I didn't know what was called a psycho crusher, but

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Speaker 1: I remember m Bison. So if you ever played Street Fighter,

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Speaker 1: he's like the big guy in the hat. He's like

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Speaker 1: the final boss or something, isn't he Yeah, yeah, or

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Speaker 1: he tends to be. I think sometimes they, you know,

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Speaker 1: later in incarnations they introduce new bosses, but he's he's

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Speaker 1: the boss. He's this boss of Street Fighter. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: I think he's supposed to be some kind of dictator

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Speaker 1: or something. He's dressed up in in I don't know,

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Speaker 1: off brand military regalia. He's wearing like a like a

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Speaker 1: captain's hat that's read in some kind of uniform. But

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Speaker 1: he's also got the magic powers, and so he can

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Speaker 1: attack you by flying at you kind of like the

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Speaker 1: rad in like horizontal dive towards you. But he's spinning

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Speaker 1: around in circles. Yeah, it's and he's flaming, of course,

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Speaker 1: and also it's it's a cool attack. Um. And you'll

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Speaker 1: see various versions of that particular attack in various games.

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Speaker 1: But there's also the version that you see in the

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Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat games as a character Nam Kung Lao, he's

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Speaker 1: the guy with a the razor blade hat uh. And

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Speaker 1: you also see something similar with Baraka. But but they

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Speaker 1: both have attacks in some of the games where they

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Speaker 1: spin around like a top and either either it's offensive

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Speaker 1: like they're they're spinning like a top and coming towards

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Speaker 1: you with their blades, or they're spinning like a top.

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Speaker 1: Kung Mile does this where he he's deflecting you, like

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Speaker 1: so if you jump at him, he starts spinning and

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Speaker 1: then bam, your injury. Well, it's very much child brain

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Speaker 1: self defense logic, where you think, like, if I spin

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Speaker 1: my arms around in circles, nobody could come anywhere near me,

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Speaker 1: right right. It's like that Simpsons been I'm gonna move

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Speaker 1: my arms like this, I'm gonna move my feet like this,

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Speaker 1: and if you get in the way, you're gonna get hit. Uh.

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Speaker 1: I think there's also a Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil vibe

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Speaker 1: to certainly the the the Kung Lao style attack, you know,

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Speaker 1: where you're just spinning in one spot and you're just

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Speaker 1: spinning so fast that you become a little tornado. Right,

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Speaker 1: So there's at least an intuition people have that, you know,

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Speaker 1: you could really do some damage to somebody by spinning

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Speaker 1: at them in one way or another. Yeah, I have

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Speaker 1: to say in Star Wars, Darth City Is busts out

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Speaker 1: a cool psycho crusher style. I'm not sure if it's

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Speaker 1: actually an attack, but more of like an advance, like

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Speaker 1: a way to quickly get at your opponents. But he

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Speaker 1: uses this in both the Revenge of the Sith and

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Speaker 1: the Clone Wars series. Oh okay, you know, I gotta say,

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Speaker 1: I I hate I know you're more of a fan

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Speaker 1: of the Prequels than I am, and I'm not trying

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Speaker 1: to start a fight, but I gotta say one of

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Speaker 1: my least favorite things about the Prequels is there's just

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Speaker 1: way too much spinning in the lightsaber battles, and the

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Speaker 1: Prequels way too much like jumping and flipping around the

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Speaker 1: the lightsaber battles become less dramatic and more frantic. I

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Speaker 1: like the lightsaber battle in uh the Empire strikes back.

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Speaker 1: You know that that's got like classic sword fight drama. Uh,

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Speaker 1: the ones where like Yoda is just doing like fourteen

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Speaker 1: somersaults in the air and these three sixty jumps and

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Speaker 1: and they're they're doing the psycho crusher and twirling around

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Speaker 1: like a screw. I don't know it kind of it

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Speaker 1: kind of takes me out of the Star Wars mindset. Well,

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Speaker 1: Yoda's shortened statue, I mean, he's gotta he's gotta do

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Speaker 1: those flips in order to combat a tower opponent. Um.

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Speaker 1: I I see what you're saying. But I do think

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Speaker 1: that the City of Spin works really well because it's

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Speaker 1: like it comes out of nowhere and then he instantly

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Speaker 1: uses more traditional attacks to to kill like three different

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Speaker 1: Jedi masters. So it seems it seems to work well

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Speaker 1: for it. You can't argue with success, Joe. I correct there.

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Speaker 1: And also I admit my ignorance because when you shared

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Speaker 1: this clip from the movie, I thought for a second

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Speaker 1: it was Christopher Lee, and I was like, oh, Christopher Lee. Okay,

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Speaker 1: but it shows what I know. Well. It does raise

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Speaker 1: the question, though, do we see that many full spins

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Speaker 1: in actual combat, because I suppose even with something like

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Speaker 1: a spin kick, you have to be careful, right, like

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Speaker 1: you don't want to throw off your your own balance

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Speaker 1: or present your back to your opponent. Um. Without even

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Speaker 1: getting into the magical effects that are often associated with

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Speaker 1: these attacks in movies and video games. UM. Now, I

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Speaker 1: have to say, I'm not a real fight officionado. I'm

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Speaker 1: not like in the n m A or boxing or

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Speaker 1: you know, any any of these. I tend to like

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Speaker 1: my my combat fictional and worked. Um and and in

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Speaker 1: those contexts, I love a good spinning kick. I love

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Speaker 1: a nice roaring elbow in Japanese pro wrestling. Um. But

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Speaker 1: but I was initially unsure, like does it make sense

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Speaker 1: to spin or is that just a risky flourish. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's funny. I remember asking this myself from the first

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Speaker 1: person perspective, because when I was a kid, I took

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Speaker 1: I'm doing air quotes here, tae kwondo. I guess I

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Speaker 1: took whatever like severely watered down version of this martial

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Speaker 1: art was being taught to young children in Tennessee in

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Speaker 1: the ninety nineties. You know, it's like, uh, I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure what exactly I was learning, but I took taekwondo classes,

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Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, even then as a child, having

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Speaker 1: questions about the practicality of the spinning kick moves, because

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Speaker 1: there would be a type of kick you do where

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Speaker 1: you would turn around, you turn all the way around

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Speaker 1: and perform a kick, And I was like, why couldn't

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Speaker 1: you just kick without turning? Does this do some kind

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Speaker 1: of advantage? Would this ever be applicable in a real

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Speaker 1: self defense situation? Uh? Like, even as a kid, I

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Speaker 1: remember having the thought, this feels more like a dance

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Speaker 1: move than a useful fighting technique, which I think is

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Speaker 1: kind of applicable, because at least the way I learned taekwondo,

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Speaker 1: it was in many ways indistinguishable from a dance class,

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Speaker 1: Like you were learning routines, like patterns of movement that

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Speaker 1: were you know, they were exercise. It was aerobic exercise,

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Speaker 1: and it was I guess supposed to look good, look

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Speaker 1: cool from the outside. I don't know, well, I mean,

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Speaker 1: there is a lot of crossover between dance and exercise

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Speaker 1: and martial art. Uh you find you you find these

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Speaker 1: these intermingled, uh to to a large extent. And I

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Speaker 1: guess also there's the psychological aspect to fight too, right,

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Speaker 1: something might be more about confusing an opponent. So I

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Speaker 1: wasn't just wasn't sure on this either, but I did

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Speaker 1: a quick glance around on YouTube to see, okay, are

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Speaker 1: legit m m A fights um ending with spin kicks?

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Speaker 1: And I did find this this amazing clip from I

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Speaker 1: think earlier in the summer and apparently went viral. So

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Speaker 1: if you're at all in an m m A out there,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen this, but it's uh Hakeen Buckley

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Speaker 1: is the m m A fighter and he busts out

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Speaker 1: this spin kick uh in the middle of this match,

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Speaker 1: and it's just a complete knockout. I'm usually not one

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Speaker 1: to find a lot of joy in UM in clips

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Speaker 1: of like legitimate knockout blows, but this one was pretty impressive.

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Speaker 1: I always find they make me they look kind of sickening,

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Speaker 1: like watching somebody's head snap back and then they fall

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Speaker 1: to the ground. It's like, yeah, this one is a

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Speaker 1: bit sickening, so don't don't don't look at it look

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Speaker 1: for it unless you you want to see this sort

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Speaker 1: of action. But it did answer my question, like, well,

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Speaker 1: that's a spin kick. He certainly did a complete spin

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Speaker 1: on that and just knocked a guy out, so um so,

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Speaker 1: so that initially answered my question, and I started looking

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Speaker 1: around a little bit more on that, and I found

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Speaker 1: an interesting post about taekwondo spinning kicks at turtle press

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Speaker 1: dot com by saying h kim and the author points

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Speaker 1: out that this apparently what spin kicks weren't a were

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Speaker 1: not a viable tactic in taekwondo until the nineteen eighties.

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Speaker 1: Uh and and the author explains that this is due

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Speaker 1: to advances in footwork and changes in fighting stance preferences

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Speaker 1: that made it more of a viable option. Also, less

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Speaker 1: restrictive protective gear made it more of an option, as

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Speaker 1: did sort of a broadening of style to include different

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Speaker 1: weight classes and sort of added creativity to the style.

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Speaker 1: So I found that interesting. Okay, well, I'll have to

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Speaker 1: take their word for it on that one. I I

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Speaker 1: cannot claim to have thoughts on this. Well, I'd be

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Speaker 1: interested to hear what any and martial arts practitioners out

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Speaker 1: there listening to this episode have to say. Certainly right

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Speaker 1: in and let us know, you know, within your style

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Speaker 1: or within you know, martial arts in general. So one

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Speaker 1: of the things that gets going in my brain when

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Speaker 1: I think about spinning, is that uh And and I'll

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Speaker 1: have an example to talk about a little bit later on.

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Speaker 1: Spinning around in circles as an adult is not fun,

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Speaker 1: and in fact it's it's not fun for like significant

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Speaker 1: periods of time after you're done doing it. But I

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Speaker 1: remember as a child, I love spinning around in circles

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Speaker 1: and I would just like do it. I'd just be

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Speaker 1: out in the yard and be like, Yeah, I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: spin around until I fall over. This is great. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of adults, and if not, most

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Speaker 1: adults can can can relate to this. Yeah, because you

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Speaker 1: think back on the fun, spinny things you did as

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Speaker 1: a kid, Like remember Mary got rounds. They still have

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Speaker 1: these occasionally at playgrounds, but it was a standard playgrounds

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Speaker 1: when when we were kids, and it would just be

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Speaker 1: kids just getting this thing going to as fast as possible,

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Speaker 1: just incredible speeds. Just write it. We had this. There

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Speaker 1: was a playground near my grandmother's house that had the

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Speaker 1: spinning aluminum death machine that I think they originally I

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Speaker 1: think they eventually had to take out because it was

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Speaker 1: just injury city. Every time children got on it, they'd

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Speaker 1: end up having to go to the hospital. And I

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Speaker 1: loved this thing because you could spin it so fast, uh,

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Speaker 1: like it was it was human powered, you know. It

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Speaker 1: was one of those where you push it, you'd get

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Speaker 1: it going like Conan the Barbarian pushing the mill wheel.

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Speaker 1: But then you build up a lot of speed and

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Speaker 1: then you just grab hold and hang on. I can't

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Speaker 1: imagine what kind of horrific injuries came off of this thing,

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Speaker 1: but but it was great when I was a kid.

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Speaker 1: And now now that sounds like torture to me. I mean,

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Speaker 1: the idea of spinning around like I did as a

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Speaker 1: child for fun, Now that sounds about as appealing as

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Speaker 1: a kick to the groin, and it's just like, why

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Speaker 1: would you want to do that? Also, add that the

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Speaker 1: I remember the playground mary, uh, the spinning things, the

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Speaker 1: merrygrounds and whatnot. They would often have that you know,

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Speaker 1: that foot trail beat into the dirt around it, which

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Speaker 1: of course would become just a complete circular mud pit

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Speaker 1: after a rain, right exactly. Another big one is is,

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Speaker 1: of course, when you're a kid rolling down a hill,

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Speaker 1: like you know, where you you lay down and then

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Speaker 1: you just roll down the hill like I remember that

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Speaker 1: being a lot of fun. And I remember, you know,

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Speaker 1: I encourage that with with my own son at a

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Speaker 1: hill near our our house in a park. But as

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Speaker 1: an adult, you're like, oh, my goodness, there's a there's

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Speaker 1: a weird rock here, there's some sort of a pipe here.

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Speaker 1: All right, here's a fire ant nest, here's another fire

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Speaker 1: ant nest. And that's not even getting into the fact that, yeah,

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Speaker 1: as an adult, the idea of spinning that much, you

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Speaker 1: would just you never get up once you got to

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Speaker 1: the bottom of the hill. Yeah, And I think these, uh,

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Speaker 1: these changes in experience are not unique to us. It

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Speaker 1: seems like there's something going on where like spinning, spinning

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Speaker 1: is highly attractive to children then and it loses its

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Speaker 1: luster as the body ages. Yeah, so let's let's start

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Speaker 1: with the kids. Why did the kids love to spin? Well?

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Speaker 1: I was looking around the for information on this, and

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Speaker 1: I found a wonderful post on this at the Penn

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Speaker 1: State Extensions Better a Kid Care page, and they point

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Speaker 1: out that spinning, rolling, and swinging are crucial sensory and

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Speaker 1: motor skill inputs to help children's nervous systems mature and organize.

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Speaker 1: So they really need these sorts of big body movements

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Speaker 1: in ways they really make our tendency to isolate them

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Speaker 1: in desks or in front of teleschool computers and so forth,

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Speaker 1: you know, more than a bit ridiculous. I think maybe

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Speaker 1: there's less of that now. I I know that education

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Speaker 1: has has has evolved somewhat and they understand the need

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Speaker 1: for big body movements and and and so forth. And

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Speaker 1: then they understood it to a certain extent when I

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Speaker 1: was a kid. You know, you would still have p

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Speaker 1: and whatnot. But yeah, kids need to spin around. You

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Speaker 1: You know, when a child spins in circles, it's because

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Speaker 1: their body craves it. And the same goes for rolling

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Speaker 1: around on the floor, standing on their heads rhythmically swaying.

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Speaker 1: Uh So they need a space to do these things.

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Speaker 1: I mean it seems in a way it's information gathering,

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Speaker 1: your your your celebrating the system, like you have to

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Speaker 1: do with your phone. When the gyroscope or whatever gets

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Speaker 1: you know, out of whack, you've got to do some

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Speaker 1: exercises to get it back on track. Yeah. So in

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Speaker 1: this extension article, the Penn State Extension article that they

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Speaker 1: point out there are some very specific ways that spinning

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Speaker 1: helps children. So, first of all, it gives them a

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Speaker 1: sense of body awareness, establishing their center for improved coordinated

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Speaker 1: movement across both sides of their bodies. UH. It also

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Speaker 1: improves shore surefootedness, which is something that might seem counterintuitive

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Speaker 1: sometimes you think, oh, this kid is just spinning around

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Speaker 1: in circles. You know, they're falling all over the place,

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Speaker 1: they're gonna run into things. But it's actually helping them

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Speaker 1: become more short surefooted. UH. It has also been shown

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Speaker 1: to improve concentration in the classroom, and they point out

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Speaker 1: that a two thousand five study from Choir, Frick and Frick,

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Speaker 1: two different fricks, UH found that the centrifugal force of

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Speaker 1: many spinning activities and experiences activate the fluid filled cavities

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Speaker 1: in the inner ear. And these are sensors that help

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Speaker 1: the brain orient the head quote which develops grounding and

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Speaker 1: sustaining attention to task. And then overall it's a boost

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Speaker 1: to the vestibular system, which controls balance, posture, gaze stabilization,

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Speaker 1: and spatial orientation. And and there's also apparently a link

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Speaker 1: to impulse control. Fun fact, right after I finished researching

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Speaker 1: this section, I went off to get some coffee and

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Speaker 1: was immediately attacked by my son with imaginary lightsabers, and

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Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah he has. He has a pair that

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Speaker 1: he he he really likes a Soo Katano and she

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Speaker 1: has to uh two lightsabers, so he's made two of

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Speaker 1: them out of uh tinfoil um cardboard tubes. And uh So, anyway,

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Speaker 1: he was attacking me, and I observed quite a bit

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Speaker 1: of spinning in his attacks, and I tried to do

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Speaker 1: one spin and I nearly fell down, uh and then

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Speaker 1: he cut my head off. But but but I I

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Speaker 1: looked around, and I've noticed that that there are actually

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Speaker 1: lightsaber exercise classes for kids out there that they can

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Speaker 1: do like virtual and i't tempted to sign him up

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Speaker 1: for one, especially after learning more about the importance of

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Speaker 1: spinning around in circles. That's genius. I would have done

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Speaker 1: that as a kid. You have exercise, get that energy out.

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Speaker 1: You just pretend to have a lightsaber. How has nobody

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Speaker 1: thought of this before? Yeah, yeah, that's brilliant. I mean,

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Speaker 1: my my only hesitation is is what what is it

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Speaker 1: going to mean for the lamps and the televisions in

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Speaker 1: your house. You gotta have a good space for that,

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Speaker 1: I imagine. So let's come back to the adults for

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Speaker 1: for most of us, Why does spinning around in circles

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Speaker 1: make us dizzy? Why when a yoga instructor on a

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Speaker 1: yoga video asked me to spin around just like three

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Speaker 1: or five times, why did I have to lay down

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Speaker 1: for like ten minutes after that? Yeah? This is funny

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Speaker 1: because this is a question that I expected to have

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Speaker 1: just a single, totally straightforward physiological answer, and instead I

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Speaker 1: found a strange variety of answers to this question without

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Speaker 1: a lot of acknowledgement that that there was variety in

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Speaker 1: the ways people are answering this. So I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: if I've stumbled on something that's actually controversial or different. Uh,

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Speaker 1: different sources are just emphasizing different aspects of of vertigo

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Speaker 1: induced by spinning. But in any case, the answer to

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Speaker 1: this question definitely ended up taking a shape that I

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Speaker 1: wouldn't expect. But before we get to the direct answer

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Speaker 1: of like why spinning in circles makes you dizzy? I

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Speaker 1: think we have to meet a fascinating and important element

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Speaker 1: in this discussion. When you just mentioned a mintigo, which

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Speaker 1: is the human vestibular system. Uh, so interesting. Fact number one.

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Speaker 1: We've talked about this on the show many times before,

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Speaker 1: but maybe you're new the show. Humans actually have way

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Speaker 1: more than five senses. I think it's funny when when

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Speaker 1: people end up talking about the five senses. I guess

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Speaker 1: you could maybe call them the big five senses. They're

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Speaker 1: the most obvious as senses, you know, site, hearing, taste, smell, touch,

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Speaker 1: But we have other ways of getting information from the

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Speaker 1: outside world and coordinating that within the brain. And one

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Speaker 1: of my favorite examples of a lesser known but extremely

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Speaker 1: important sense distinct from the big five is appropriate reception.

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Speaker 1: It's the sense that informs you where the different parts

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Speaker 1: of your body are. So, how is it that you

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Speaker 1: can type without looking at the keys? How is it

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Speaker 1: that you can close your eyes and you still know

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Speaker 1: where your hands are. You know whether they're at your

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Speaker 1: sides or over your head, even if you're blindfolded. We

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Speaker 1: have a sense that's constantly updating the brain with information

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Speaker 1: about the position and orientation of the rest of the body. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's one that I can't help but feel that it's

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Speaker 1: it's so invisible to us because it is so constant.

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Speaker 1: It's not as easily disruptible, you know, in the sense

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Speaker 1: that we can close our eyes, we can sort of

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Speaker 1: stopper our ears and so forth. But but in terms

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Speaker 1: of turning off appropriate exception, um, not so easily done.

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Speaker 1: And then also it's just so it's so close to us.

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Speaker 1: It's you know, this is very much you can't see

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Speaker 1: the forest for the trees situation. Yeah, yeah, that is

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Speaker 1: very interesting. It's harder to turn that one off than

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Speaker 1: it is some of the other senses. But in a way,

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Speaker 1: I feel like that's part of them. When people go

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Speaker 1: for sort of like a sense deprivation or certain types

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Speaker 1: of meditation that are that try to ignore sensory stimuli

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Speaker 1: or just focus on one particular sensory stimuli, I think

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Speaker 1: one of the difficult things is ignoring that like feeling

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Speaker 1: of where your body is, and that I think that's

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Speaker 1: one of the important reasons why meditation often requires you

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Speaker 1: to be in a position of rest, because it's easier

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Speaker 1: to ignore the position of your body if you're not

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Speaker 1: really doing anything active with your body. Yeah. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: definitely it's the case with float tanks where if it's

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Speaker 1: calibrated correctly, you're you're floating in water that's about the

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Speaker 1: same temperature as your own body. And yeah, it's it's

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Speaker 1: about sort of losing a sense of of your physical self. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: thank thank But they're all kinds of senses. Some some

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Speaker 1: bleed more silly into others, or you can make the

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Speaker 1: argument that they do. Like you can make arguments that

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Speaker 1: they're different types of touch sensations, you know, feeling of

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Speaker 1: tactile pressure versus feeling of heat. You know, you can

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Speaker 1: talk about that. Another interesting one is chronoception, the sensation

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Speaker 1: of the passing of time and judgment of duration. That

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Speaker 1: actually is a sense of the external world. And there

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Speaker 1: are types of nervous system conditions that can affect your chronoception.

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Speaker 1: In fact, not just conditions as in diseases, but chronoception

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Speaker 1: changes as you age, for example. But here's where things

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Speaker 1: get even weirder. The ear is not only responsible for

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Speaker 1: the sense of hearing. There are other senses that are

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Speaker 1: located within the ear. Organs in the human inner ear

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Speaker 1: are also responsible for one major component of equilibrioception, or

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Speaker 1: the sense of balance, and these organs together in the

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Speaker 1: inner ear, are known as the vestibul alert system. If

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Speaker 1: you get a chance, you should look up an illustration

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Speaker 1: of the human vestibular system. It is like a chambered

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Speaker 1: nautilus or an alien squid snail. It's got one section

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Speaker 1: which curls, and this is less related to the equilibrio sception.

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Speaker 1: That's the cochlea, the swirling snail shell part. But then

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Speaker 1: coming out of the head of the swirling snail shell

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Speaker 1: of the cochlea, there are these strange tentacle things, these

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Speaker 1: three looping canals, each one like a semicircular tube snaking

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Speaker 1: back on itself. And then you've also got these two

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Speaker 1: tiny organs below the position down below the bases of

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Speaker 1: these three semicircular canals. These two tiny organs are known

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Speaker 1: as the utricle and the saccule, and together the utricle

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Speaker 1: and the saccule are what's known as the odo lith organs,

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Speaker 1: which literally means ear stones or ear rocks uh all

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Speaker 1: so in the realm of cool names, this whole complex

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Speaker 1: of organs here is known as the labyrinth, or the

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Speaker 1: vestibular labyrinth, the bony labyrinth. You have one labyrinth in

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Speaker 1: each year. Now, if you go back to these hammer

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Speaker 1: loop snake tentacles, the three semicircular canals which each sort

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Speaker 1: of loop in a different orientation, these things are hollow

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Speaker 1: and partially filled with fluid fluid and gel uh the

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Speaker 1: gel known as cupula and the fluid known as indo lymph,

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Speaker 1: and they include interior spaces with these little hair cells,

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Speaker 1: these little follicles that are sensitive and connected to nerve

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Speaker 1: tissue that runs out to the rest of the brain.

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Speaker 1: So when you move your head, so you turn your

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Speaker 1: head to the right or the left, or you tilt

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Speaker 1: your head from side to side, or you tilt your

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Speaker 1: head forward or back. Inside these loops, the fluid moves

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Speaker 1: around in the canals in the inner spaces and it

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Speaker 1: comes into contact with the different hair cells and the

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Speaker 1: hair cells since the movement of this fluid and this

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Speaker 1: can give you information about the orientation of your head.

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Speaker 1: And the hair cells are connected to the brain via

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Speaker 1: a nerve fiber called the vestibular nerve, and then the

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Speaker 1: brain interprets the stimulation data from those hair cells into

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Speaker 1: sense information about the orientation of the head. And the

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Speaker 1: main part of the brain involved in processing coordinating information

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Speaker 1: about balance and movement is the cerebellum, which, if you've

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Speaker 1: seen an illustration of the brain, is that little meaty

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Speaker 1: lump position on the rear underside of the brain. Is

427
00:22:35,119 --> 00:22:37,679
Speaker 1: kind of the brains but it's sort of right at

428
00:22:37,680 --> 00:22:40,679
Speaker 1: the top of the spinal column. So everybody feel your

429
00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:45,040
Speaker 1: brain and and and you'll you'll feel it. Get your

430
00:22:45,119 --> 00:22:50,000
Speaker 1: get your hand right in there. Now, about these canals

431
00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:52,080
Speaker 1: in the labyrinth, one thing that I think is really

432
00:22:52,080 --> 00:22:55,159
Speaker 1: cool is that, Okay, so there's one canal that is

433
00:22:55,240 --> 00:22:59,360
Speaker 1: devoted to sensing the tilting of the head forward or backward.

434
00:23:00,160 --> 00:23:03,520
Speaker 1: There is another canal that's devoted to sensing the turning

435
00:23:03,600 --> 00:23:06,680
Speaker 1: of the head from side to side, and then there's

436
00:23:06,720 --> 00:23:11,040
Speaker 1: another that is dedicated to sensing the tilting of the

437
00:23:11,080 --> 00:23:14,720
Speaker 1: head toward each shoulder. And so what you can realize

438
00:23:14,760 --> 00:23:18,800
Speaker 1: is that these three canals represent the three different dimensions

439
00:23:18,840 --> 00:23:22,679
Speaker 1: of space. So if I'm understanding correctly, I think i am.

440
00:23:22,800 --> 00:23:27,080
Speaker 1: These three canals also correspond to the three attitude variables

441
00:23:27,240 --> 00:23:31,439
Speaker 1: of aircraft and submarines, which are role, pitch, and yaw.

442
00:23:31,960 --> 00:23:35,520
Speaker 1: So what mammal heads and B fifty twos have in

443
00:23:35,600 --> 00:23:38,720
Speaker 1: common is that they live in three dimensional space. And

444
00:23:38,760 --> 00:23:41,840
Speaker 1: if you're going to adjust movements through three dimensional space,

445
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:44,480
Speaker 1: and since uh all the different ways that you can

446
00:23:44,560 --> 00:23:47,800
Speaker 1: change your attitude or change the vector along which you're moving,

447
00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:50,240
Speaker 1: then you need a sensor for one of each of

448
00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:54,040
Speaker 1: these three dimensions. Interesting, Rob, I know you're a big

449
00:23:54,080 --> 00:23:56,800
Speaker 1: fan of of airplanes. Do do you ever think about

450
00:23:56,840 --> 00:24:00,159
Speaker 1: your body in terms of role, pitch, and y'all? Uh? No,

451
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:02,640
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think I have, though. It's it's

452
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:04,280
Speaker 1: certainly now that you may bring it up here. It's

453
00:24:04,320 --> 00:24:06,959
Speaker 1: it's making me think back to like flight simulator games,

454
00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:10,400
Speaker 1: you know, where you you definitely have visual displays of roll, pitch,

455
00:24:10,440 --> 00:24:12,960
Speaker 1: and yaw, But we don't think about that in terms

456
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:16,720
Speaker 1: of our own personal experience of physical reality. I mean,

457
00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:18,760
Speaker 1: we are babies of the three D space, so it

458
00:24:19,359 --> 00:24:23,800
Speaker 1: governs man and machine alike. Now, earlier I also mentioned

459
00:24:23,920 --> 00:24:27,480
Speaker 1: these otolith organs. They also have sensitive hair cells, but

460
00:24:27,560 --> 00:24:32,080
Speaker 1: the sensitive hair cells here are arrayed with strange mineral

461
00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:37,080
Speaker 1: formations made out of calcium carbonate again, hence otolith the

462
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:41,520
Speaker 1: name ear stones or ear rocks, and calcium carbonate is

463
00:24:41,520 --> 00:24:44,160
Speaker 1: the same compound that makes up the bulk of the

464
00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:48,880
Speaker 1: shells of sea creatures and pearls, but also chalk. It's

465
00:24:48,920 --> 00:24:52,600
Speaker 1: a very widespread, widely found mineral. UH. It's used in

466
00:24:52,680 --> 00:24:56,560
Speaker 1: tons of human technology. It's used in for example, agricultural

467
00:24:56,680 --> 00:24:59,840
Speaker 1: lime UH to make chalk for a blackboard, all kinds

468
00:24:59,840 --> 00:25:03,800
Speaker 1: of things. But I also found one totally off topic

469
00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:07,119
Speaker 1: connection that I couldn't bear not to mention, and that

470
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:10,920
Speaker 1: is that there's one common stable crystal form of calcium

471
00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:14,400
Speaker 1: carbonate known as calcite, and there is one very strange

472
00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:19,080
Speaker 1: and beautiful form of calcite known as iceland spar, which

473
00:25:19,119 --> 00:25:23,240
Speaker 1: is a transparent rock. It's a mineral that is clear,

474
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:28,560
Speaker 1: like ice or like slightly you know, uh, slightly jacked

475
00:25:28,640 --> 00:25:33,200
Speaker 1: up glass. And it's been speculated that this transparent crystal,

476
00:25:33,359 --> 00:25:37,639
Speaker 1: iceland spar, was actually the historical reference point for an

477
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 1: object that is recorded in medieval histories known as the sunstone,

478
00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:45,439
Speaker 1: and their references to this in medieval Norse texts. I

479
00:25:45,440 --> 00:25:50,240
Speaker 1: think we're talking about Iceland because this crystal can be

480
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:53,680
Speaker 1: used to detect the direction of the sun. When you're

481
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:56,720
Speaker 1: sailing in the Arctic and the sun is totally obscured

482
00:25:56,720 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 1: by clouds, so you're out, it's a gray day. You

483
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:01,080
Speaker 1: can't see where the sun is at all, but you

484
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:02,800
Speaker 1: need to know where the sun is in order to

485
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:07,040
Speaker 1: navigate your boat. You can apparently use a chunk of

486
00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:10,880
Speaker 1: this transparent crystal to find the location of the sun

487
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:14,359
Speaker 1: by by the crystal's effect on the polarized light coming

488
00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:17,760
Speaker 1: from the sun through the clouds. Oh fascinating. Yeah, because

489
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:20,200
Speaker 1: I think we've all been saying out on the beach

490
00:26:20,520 --> 00:26:22,840
Speaker 1: perhaps on one of these days where it's overcast, you

491
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:25,080
Speaker 1: know the sun is up there, but you're not exactly

492
00:26:25,119 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 1: sure what position it's in. Yeah. So calcium carbonate itself

493
00:26:28,920 --> 00:26:33,720
Speaker 1: is just a very versatile and mini splendored mineral on

494
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:36,480
Speaker 1: its own. In fact, it's the subject of a of

495
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:39,960
Speaker 1: a great classic talk in science, the talk about a

496
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 1: piece of chalk that was given by by T. H. Huxley.

497
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:46,119
Speaker 1: But but I also included a picture for you to

498
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:49,320
Speaker 1: look at here, rob, which is a scanning electron micrograph

499
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:53,800
Speaker 1: that I found of calcium carbonate crystals from the from

500
00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:58,400
Speaker 1: the utricle of a cat. And so it's showing these

501
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:01,720
Speaker 1: tiny crystals. Each one is mike ascopically small, but yeah,

502
00:27:01,760 --> 00:27:06,479
Speaker 1: they these rocks. Basically, these crystals play a role in

503
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:09,760
Speaker 1: the physiology and function of the inner ear. Now, what

504
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:14,800
Speaker 1: these odo lith organs do that's different from the semicircular

505
00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:20,159
Speaker 1: canals is that the the odoliths detect vectors of acceleration

506
00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 1: horizontal and vertical, and So this is why you can

507
00:27:24,240 --> 00:27:27,320
Speaker 1: feel whether you are going up or down in an

508
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:29,919
Speaker 1: elevator even though you can't see out of it. So

509
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:33,320
Speaker 1: in an elevator, you're not changing the orientation of your head.

510
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 1: You know, you're not bending it forward or whatever. The

511
00:27:36,040 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 1: head is staying fixed relative to to gravity basically. But

512
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 1: you are moving, You're going up and down, and so

513
00:27:42,760 --> 00:27:46,080
Speaker 1: the the saccula in there can detect that. So we're

514
00:27:46,119 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 1: left with this really strange fact. Inside your ears you

515
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:53,080
Speaker 1: have tiny organs lined with crystals of the material that

516
00:27:53,200 --> 00:27:57,280
Speaker 1: makes oyster shells and pearls, and they detect which directions

517
00:27:57,280 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 1: you're accelerating in even if you can't see, which I

518
00:28:00,640 --> 00:28:04,480
Speaker 1: thought was just a beautiful connection. The crystalline new a

519
00:28:04,560 --> 00:28:09,040
Speaker 1: genus of the inner ear. Oh, that'd be great. I've

520
00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:11,000
Speaker 1: never heard of that one. And people who like give

521
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:14,200
Speaker 1: their friends crystals for like certain healing powers or something.

522
00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:16,359
Speaker 1: What are the crystals of the human inner ear? Do

523
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:19,119
Speaker 1: if you like slay your enemies and take the crystals

524
00:28:19,119 --> 00:28:22,280
Speaker 1: out of their ears? Oh man, that would be a great. Uh.

525
00:28:23,320 --> 00:28:24,879
Speaker 1: That would be a great function of some sort of

526
00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:28,160
Speaker 1: like alien invasion story where the alien has to feed

527
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:31,840
Speaker 1: on on on these crystals, you know. I was also

528
00:28:31,880 --> 00:28:33,919
Speaker 1: I didn't get super deep into this because it's kind

529
00:28:33,920 --> 00:28:35,720
Speaker 1: of a tangent, but I was also just looking at

530
00:28:35,760 --> 00:28:41,360
Speaker 1: studies indicating the many faces of of a healthy odo

531
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:43,640
Speaker 1: lith and what it does for the body. For example,

532
00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:46,080
Speaker 1: one study I was looking at mission the possibility that

533
00:28:46,720 --> 00:28:51,680
Speaker 1: auto liths are possibly important for the formation of spatial memories,

534
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:55,120
Speaker 1: and that the degradation of the effectiveness of the odo

535
00:28:55,160 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: lith oysters may account for the decline of spatial memory

536
00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:02,720
Speaker 1: with age. So as you get older and the oyster

537
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 1: shells in your ears, the otoliths become a little bit

538
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:08,240
Speaker 1: less good at what they do, and this actually could

539
00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:12,320
Speaker 1: be related to people being less accurate at forming spatial

540
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:15,760
Speaker 1: memories as they get older. Interesting, Yeah, because there's certainly

541
00:29:15,760 --> 00:29:18,320
Speaker 1: there's the brain itself, but the brain has to make

542
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:22,040
Speaker 1: use of sensory information. Yeah, and this ties into stuff

543
00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:25,800
Speaker 1: we've talked about before and how um in some ways

544
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:31,440
Speaker 1: the brain remembers spaces by simulating movement but through them.

545
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:33,920
Speaker 1: But the vestibular system is also it should be mentioned,

546
00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:37,960
Speaker 1: a team player. So these canals and the otoliths, they

547
00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:41,680
Speaker 1: don't have much use alone, but rather they coordinate information

548
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:44,200
Speaker 1: in the brain with other sensory systems such as the

549
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:49,560
Speaker 1: visual system, appropriate receptive faculties to form a comprehensive movement

550
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:53,160
Speaker 1: detection and feedback and adjustment system. And there's all kinds

551
00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 1: of stuff that has to happen, like, uh, for example,

552
00:29:55,720 --> 00:30:01,720
Speaker 1: your visual system adjusts itself to account for changes in

553
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:04,719
Speaker 1: the movement and orientation of your body that are sensed

554
00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: by the vestibular system, and so the eyes can see

555
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 1: your orientation with respect to the environment. The vestibular system,

556
00:30:12,680 --> 00:30:15,640
Speaker 1: since it is the head's orientation and movement with respect

557
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:20,040
Speaker 1: to gravity and to inertia, the appropriate sceptive system feels

558
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:22,120
Speaker 1: where the rest of the body is in relation to

559
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:24,200
Speaker 1: the head. And these systems all kind of have to

560
00:30:24,240 --> 00:30:27,440
Speaker 1: work together to to give you a picture of here's

561
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:30,160
Speaker 1: where your body is and how it's moving. And so

562
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:34,960
Speaker 1: when we come back to the question of dizziness and vertigo, uh,

563
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:39,360
Speaker 1: I guess that's addressing what happens when these systems get

564
00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:41,960
Speaker 1: out of synchronization with each other, or when one of

565
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:46,239
Speaker 1: the systems begins to fail or have problems, And so

566
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 1: to ask the question like what is dizziness? That's also

567
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:51,880
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting question because there are a range

568
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 1: of different sensations that people call dizziness, that they're all

569
00:30:56,120 --> 00:30:59,400
Speaker 1: kind of associated with one another. So, for example, I

570
00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:04,800
Speaker 1: was reading a paper called Dizziness in Vertigo Syndromes Viewed

571
00:31:04,800 --> 00:31:08,520
Speaker 1: with a Historical Eye by Dorin Hoopert and Thomas Brandt

572
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:12,640
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Neurology, published in and they cite

573
00:31:13,040 --> 00:31:18,040
Speaker 1: a definition of dizziness and vertigo from the International Barani

574
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: Society of neuro Autology, and they say, quote, vertigo is

575
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:26,080
Speaker 1: the sensation of self motion when no self motion is occurring.

576
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:31,240
Speaker 1: Dizziness is the sensation of disturbed or impaired spatial orientation

577
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 1: without a false or distorted sense of motion. And imbalance

578
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: or unsteadiness is the feeling of being unstable while sitting, standing,

579
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:44,440
Speaker 1: or walking without a particular directional preference. But I gotta

580
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 1: say so, so that may be applied at the clinical

581
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:50,720
Speaker 1: level or in the in the literature, but it's clear

582
00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:53,520
Speaker 1: that when people talk about dizziness, a lot of times

583
00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:56,680
Speaker 1: what they're talking about here is vertigo, right. It is

584
00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:00,760
Speaker 1: the sense that you are spinning or moving when you're not.

585
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: And though a lot of sources I was reading said

586
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:06,600
Speaker 1: the sense that you're moving when you're not to be pedantic.

587
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:08,800
Speaker 1: I think technically, what you'd really have to say is

588
00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:11,840
Speaker 1: it's the sense that you're accelerating, not the sense that

589
00:32:11,880 --> 00:32:14,600
Speaker 1: you're moving, because once you're moving at a constant speed

590
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:19,240
Speaker 1: and direction, movement is imperceptible. It's only changes in speed

591
00:32:19,320 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 1: or direction that that are sensed in the inner ear.

592
00:32:22,320 --> 00:32:23,959
Speaker 1: But I think you absolutely correct about how we just

593
00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:26,400
Speaker 1: we we tend to refer to things as dizziness or

594
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:29,680
Speaker 1: feeling dizzy, even if we're talking about vertico, etcetera. Right,

595
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:32,000
Speaker 1: So I think a more you know, street level definition

596
00:32:32,040 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 1: that people would use I found on the Mayo Clinic website. Uh,

597
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:37,800
Speaker 1: they say dizziness is a term used to describe a

598
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 1: range of sensations such as feeling faint, woozy, weak, or unsteady.

599
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:45,360
Speaker 1: Dizziness that creates the false sense that you or your

600
00:32:45,400 --> 00:32:49,240
Speaker 1: surroundings are spinning or moving is called vertigo. Uh So

601
00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:52,760
Speaker 1: these terms might be used differently in the literature sometimes,

602
00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:55,680
Speaker 1: but I think we can basically say, you know, dizziness vertigo.

603
00:32:55,760 --> 00:32:57,760
Speaker 1: We're we're sort of talking about the same thing and

604
00:32:57,880 --> 00:33:01,480
Speaker 1: related things. Now that's paper I just mentioned the one

605
00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:04,960
Speaker 1: by Dorian Hoopert and Thomas Brandt in the Journal of Neurology.

606
00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:09,400
Speaker 1: UH it has a section where it looked into, uh

607
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:14,200
Speaker 1: the etymology of terms used for dizziness, which which I

608
00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:18,240
Speaker 1: thought was actually extremely interesting and revealing. So in this

609
00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:22,160
Speaker 1: part of their paper they say, uh, quote Latin, for example,

610
00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:26,640
Speaker 1: has at least two source words to describe the condition vertigo.

611
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:31,560
Speaker 1: Vertigo in Latin refers to turning, spinning, rotating, and is

612
00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 1: derived from the verb vertere, meaning to turn. Another word,

613
00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:41,600
Speaker 1: caligo means darkening of the eyes, funereal crape, and I

614
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:43,720
Speaker 1: think that's a cloth that would be placed over a

615
00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:48,680
Speaker 1: over a body at a funeral and and dizziness. So strange,

616
00:33:48,800 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 1: darkening of the eyes, the cloth over the over the

617
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:55,360
Speaker 1: body at a funeral, and dizziness. And they say that

618
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 1: this word caligo and not the word vertigo, appears in

619
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:03,920
Speaker 1: ancient x passages referring to heights and the symptoms of

620
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:06,320
Speaker 1: a fear of heights. So you know, often people will

621
00:34:06,360 --> 00:34:08,600
Speaker 1: feel vertigo or dizziness if they've got a fear of

622
00:34:08,640 --> 00:34:10,480
Speaker 1: heights and they you know, look off of a cliff

623
00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:13,880
Speaker 1: for something. But they say that collego was also used

624
00:34:14,120 --> 00:34:18,920
Speaker 1: quote metaphorically for dizziness arising from feelings of exultation or

625
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:23,520
Speaker 1: for being overwhelmed and losing one's grip on reality. For example,

626
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 1: Tacitus in his work History A describes how Vespasian wanted

627
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:32,920
Speaker 1: to become an emperor himself after Nero's suicide. He is

628
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:36,080
Speaker 1: said to have felt dizzy when the soldiers addressed him

629
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 1: as emperor and used other high ranking titles. Interesting. But

630
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:43,480
Speaker 1: then this next piece of etymology I thought was also

631
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: really interesting. They say the word giddy is believed to

632
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:51,600
Speaker 1: be derived from the Old English word giddig, meaning insane

633
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:56,400
Speaker 1: or literally possessed by a god. The Oxford English Dictionary

634
00:34:56,480 --> 00:34:59,799
Speaker 1: defines the word dizzy as having or involving a sensation

635
00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:03,279
Speaker 1: of spinning around and losing one's balance. It is said

636
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:07,560
Speaker 1: to originate from the Old English word disig, meaning foolish,

637
00:35:07,640 --> 00:35:09,880
Speaker 1: and is thought to be related to the Low German

638
00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:14,160
Speaker 1: do sig, meaning giddy, and the Old High German tusig,

639
00:35:14,239 --> 00:35:18,680
Speaker 1: which relates, which translates as foolish or weak. So really

640
00:35:18,719 --> 00:35:24,040
Speaker 1: interesting this this ancient um historical association between insanity and

641
00:35:24,120 --> 00:35:27,880
Speaker 1: being possessed by a god with the with the feeling

642
00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:33,320
Speaker 1: of dizziness. But okay, anyway to look at the question

643
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:35,399
Speaker 1: of what's actually happening in the body when you spin

644
00:35:35,480 --> 00:35:39,279
Speaker 1: around in circles and become dizzy. Uh So, first of all,

645
00:35:39,320 --> 00:35:41,240
Speaker 1: I have to say I could not find a single

646
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:46,320
Speaker 1: authoritative scientific paper that really looks directly at this question.

647
00:35:46,360 --> 00:35:50,399
Speaker 1: There are some studies that, uh look at dizziness from

648
00:35:50,560 --> 00:35:52,560
Speaker 1: a question of like things that can be done to

649
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:55,080
Speaker 1: alleviate it. But if there's a paper that just looks

650
00:35:55,120 --> 00:35:57,960
Speaker 1: at what causes dizziness and spinning, I was not able

651
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:00,320
Speaker 1: to find that. Yet, maybe maybe it's out there somewhere

652
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:02,399
Speaker 1: and somebody can find it and send it our way.

653
00:36:02,840 --> 00:36:06,320
Speaker 1: I did find a number of articles on popular scientific websites,

654
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:10,719
Speaker 1: but again these articles were somewhat in disagreement with each other,

655
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:15,839
Speaker 1: without any acknowledgement that they were citing different explanations. So

656
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:18,040
Speaker 1: one example that I found in a number of articles

657
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:21,799
Speaker 1: had to do with the effects of inertia on the

658
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 1: fluid in the canals in the inner ear. Now, this

659
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:26,759
Speaker 1: is an article. This is from an article on Live

660
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:31,640
Speaker 1: Science by Natalie Wolkover, and the author here writes that quote,

661
00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:34,759
Speaker 1: when you spin in a circle, inertia initially causes the

662
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:38,400
Speaker 1: indo lymph. Remember that's the fluid in the inner ears

663
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:42,319
Speaker 1: that moves around to stimulate those hair cells, and that

664
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:46,880
Speaker 1: allows your body to detect orientation of the head and motion. Uh,

665
00:36:47,040 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 1: she says. Inertia initially causes the indo lymph to slosh

666
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:55,520
Speaker 1: in the direction opposite of your head's motion. It resists

667
00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:59,000
Speaker 1: the movement of your head, dragging the cupula and again

668
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:03,480
Speaker 1: that's the the slower moving gel that's in there backwards

669
00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:06,720
Speaker 1: with it and thus causing the sensory hair suspended inside

670
00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:11,080
Speaker 1: the cupula to bend against the direction in which you're spinning. However,

671
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:14,360
Speaker 1: within moments, the endo lymph and thus the more gelatinous

672
00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:17,840
Speaker 1: cupula adjust to the movement of your head and start

673
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:20,799
Speaker 1: going with the flow. This causes the hair cells to

674
00:37:20,880 --> 00:37:23,799
Speaker 1: straighten and your brain no longer receives the message that

675
00:37:23,840 --> 00:37:27,799
Speaker 1: you're spinning. Your perception has become normalized, the rotation of

676
00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:30,480
Speaker 1: your head giving you the sense that you are still

677
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:33,799
Speaker 1: and the world is rotating around you. Okay, So that

678
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:36,640
Speaker 1: would sort of pair up with the understanding of dizziness

679
00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:40,440
Speaker 1: that it is the sensation of motion even when you

680
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:43,480
Speaker 1: are not moving right like, I'm no longer spinning around

681
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:46,760
Speaker 1: in circles. I've stopped, but I feel like I'm spinning

682
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:49,600
Speaker 1: around in circles, and therefore I have to lay down. Yeah,

683
00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:51,920
Speaker 1: and from a first person perspective, I would say that

684
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:55,440
Speaker 1: is part of the sensation of dizziness. Uh, though dizziness

685
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:58,879
Speaker 1: might also be more than that. But but of course,

686
00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:01,440
Speaker 1: then when you stop spinning walk over rights, you have

687
00:38:01,480 --> 00:38:06,200
Speaker 1: halted the rotation of your semicircular canals. And because of inertia,

688
00:38:06,400 --> 00:38:09,200
Speaker 1: the indo lymph keeps spinning. And so it's kind of

689
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 1: the way that you know, you can spin a bucket around,

690
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:13,760
Speaker 1: but then if you stop spinning the bucket, the water

691
00:38:13,840 --> 00:38:17,400
Speaker 1: in the bucket will keep spinning, it will keep slashing um,

692
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:20,560
Speaker 1: she writes. Because of inertia, the indo lymph keeps spinning,

693
00:38:20,640 --> 00:38:24,319
Speaker 1: resisting change. Yet again, as the fluid continues to move,

694
00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:28,120
Speaker 1: it once again deflects the cupula, this time in the

695
00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:31,279
Speaker 1: direction in which you were spinning moments before. And as

696
00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:34,600
Speaker 1: the using cupula bends those hair cells, a signal of

697
00:38:34,640 --> 00:38:37,760
Speaker 1: movement is transmitted to the brain you since you are moving,

698
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:41,960
Speaker 1: but you're not, and that's dizziness. Okay, So you know,

699
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:44,640
Speaker 1: based on the other things I've been reading, that explanation

700
00:38:44,680 --> 00:38:46,920
Speaker 1: would make some amount of sense. It's saying that the

701
00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:49,520
Speaker 1: effects of inertia on the fluid in the canals in

702
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:53,320
Speaker 1: the inner ear after you stop spinning, causes some kind

703
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:57,360
Speaker 1: of you know, uh, causes some false signals in the brain.

704
00:38:57,480 --> 00:39:01,560
Speaker 1: And this is disorienting, especially impaired with your other senses,

705
00:39:01,560 --> 00:39:03,600
Speaker 1: like your eyes and everything are telling you you're not

706
00:39:03,640 --> 00:39:06,759
Speaker 1: spinning anymore, but your interer ear feels like you are. Yeah,

707
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:10,000
Speaker 1: the slough bladders in our in our head and are

708
00:39:10,000 --> 00:39:13,200
Speaker 1: all slashed up, basically. And this is mirrored in another

709
00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:15,480
Speaker 1: article I was I found on the subject, one in

710
00:39:15,520 --> 00:39:20,480
Speaker 1: Popular Science by Claire Muldarelli, again referencing the movement of

711
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 1: the indo lymph and the cupula UH. Muldarelli writes, quote,

712
00:39:24,160 --> 00:39:27,200
Speaker 1: the problem comes when you stop. Your muscles are able

713
00:39:27,239 --> 00:39:29,920
Speaker 1: to start and stop really quickly without any issues, but

714
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:33,280
Speaker 1: that fluid doesn't work as fast. Even though you stopped,

715
00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 1: the fluid is still moving and it takes some time

716
00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:38,839
Speaker 1: for it to finally stop. While it's still moving, those

717
00:39:38,840 --> 00:39:41,200
Speaker 1: hairs are still picking up on the motion and sending

718
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:44,760
Speaker 1: signals saying I'm moving to the brain. The brain receives

719
00:39:44,800 --> 00:39:47,480
Speaker 1: the signal, but at the same time knows the body

720
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:51,399
Speaker 1: is perfectly still, and the same explanation about the the

721
00:39:51,440 --> 00:39:54,440
Speaker 1: inertial effects of the moving indo lymph within the canals

722
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:56,680
Speaker 1: in the brain or in the in the in the

723
00:39:56,680 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 1: inter eear. This is also mirrored in the House to

724
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:02,320
Speaker 1: four article that I found on the subject. Is basically

725
00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:06,080
Speaker 1: the endo lymph keeps moving after you stop spinning. This

726
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:10,440
Speaker 1: confuses the brain. While these explanations so I found this

727
00:40:10,480 --> 00:40:13,400
Speaker 1: across multiple sources. It does seem to sort of make sense.

728
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:15,799
Speaker 1: But if this is true, one thing I wonder about

729
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:19,960
Speaker 1: is why is it that spinning in particular is liable

730
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:23,160
Speaker 1: to make you dizzy? And why not other types of

731
00:40:23,239 --> 00:40:27,280
Speaker 1: movement couldn't other types of movement apart from spinning also

732
00:40:27,640 --> 00:40:30,480
Speaker 1: cause you know, inertial drag in the fluids in your

733
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 1: inner ears, and that your body would stop moving before

734
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 1: the fluid stops moving. Yeah, that's a good question, I am,

735
00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:40,400
Speaker 1: you know, based on some of the stuff will discuss

736
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:42,560
Speaker 1: I think mostly in the next episode. It does make

737
00:40:42,600 --> 00:40:46,200
Speaker 1: me think about the frequency of of use when it

738
00:40:46,200 --> 00:40:50,160
Speaker 1: comes to spins, you know, um, like in terms of

739
00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:55,400
Speaker 1: just straight up acceleration and deceleration. Uh, in our daily lives,

740
00:40:55,480 --> 00:40:58,279
Speaker 1: like we might not be running marathons and pass and

741
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:02,279
Speaker 1: batons all that much, but we are still accelerating and

742
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:08,480
Speaker 1: decel wrating fairly regularly. Yeah. Whereas the spin, especially, you know,

743
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:11,319
Speaker 1: the sort of spins that we think about, uh an

744
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:15,319
Speaker 1: experience related to dizziness, those are not going to necessarily

745
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:18,799
Speaker 1: be a regular part of your daily life, That's true. Yeah,

746
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:20,759
Speaker 1: it could be a it could be a conditioning thing,

747
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:22,920
Speaker 1: and the conditioning thing would actually tie into something that

748
00:41:22,960 --> 00:41:24,480
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about in a bit when we

749
00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:28,480
Speaker 1: get into how like dancers and and ice skaters supposedly

750
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:30,960
Speaker 1: deal with this. But before we get into that, I

751
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:34,640
Speaker 1: wanted to mention the other explanations I came across um

752
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:37,360
Speaker 1: for for why we get dizzy when we spin in circles,

753
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:41,480
Speaker 1: and specifically, these other explanations are based in the brains

754
00:41:41,520 --> 00:41:46,279
Speaker 1: constant attempt to coordinate vestibular information with visual information from

755
00:41:46,320 --> 00:41:49,480
Speaker 1: the eyes specifically. So this is from an explainer I

756
00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:53,359
Speaker 1: found written in Scientific American written by Amir Karadmond, who

757
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:58,640
Speaker 1: is a neurologist with Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Kadmond has

758
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:01,960
Speaker 1: has this different explana nation. He says, quote, if we

759
00:42:02,080 --> 00:42:04,640
Speaker 1: rotate our head to the right. While our eyes remain

760
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:08,560
Speaker 1: focused on an object straight ahead, our eyes naturally moved

761
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 1: to the left at the same speed. This involuntary response

762
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:16,560
Speaker 1: allows us to stay focused on a stationary object. And

763
00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:19,720
Speaker 1: this is really physiologically important, right, Like for the body

764
00:42:19,760 --> 00:42:22,200
Speaker 1: to function, you need to be able to keep focused

765
00:42:22,239 --> 00:42:25,560
Speaker 1: on something while you're moving around, you know, otherwise it

766
00:42:25,560 --> 00:42:28,400
Speaker 1: would be really difficult to like hunt or fight or

767
00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:31,520
Speaker 1: you know, do anything like that if you can't stay

768
00:42:31,520 --> 00:42:33,880
Speaker 1: focused even while your body is moving. So the eyes

769
00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:40,120
Speaker 1: adjust as as the body moves. Um, but Karadmon continues quote.

770
00:42:40,440 --> 00:42:43,600
Speaker 1: Spinning is more complicated. When we move our head during

771
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:47,000
Speaker 1: a spin, our eyes start to move in the opposite direction,

772
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:50,399
Speaker 1: but reach their limit before our head completes a full

773
00:42:50,440 --> 00:42:54,640
Speaker 1: three and sixty degree turn, So our eyes flick back

774
00:42:54,680 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 1: to a new starting position mid spin, and the motion

775
00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:01,480
Speaker 1: repeats as we rotate. When our head rotation triggers this

776
00:43:01,560 --> 00:43:07,520
Speaker 1: automatic repetitive eye movement called nastagmus, we get dizzy. Uh

777
00:43:07,560 --> 00:43:11,879
Speaker 1: so nastagmus again, Yeah, it's this repetitive jerking around of

778
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:15,319
Speaker 1: the eyes. Um and nastagmus can be triggered by certain

779
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:18,680
Speaker 1: kinds of stimuli, like if you show people a rotating

780
00:43:18,800 --> 00:43:22,200
Speaker 1: drum that has stripes painted on it, you can trigger

781
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:25,360
Speaker 1: nastagmus as the eye tries to track the fast moving

782
00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:29,960
Speaker 1: stripes as as they go past um. But another interesting

783
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:33,319
Speaker 1: fact I found is that nastagmus plays an important role

784
00:43:33,400 --> 00:43:37,320
Speaker 1: in the arsenal of field sobriety tests used by law enforcement.

785
00:43:37,719 --> 00:43:40,960
Speaker 1: So the normal procedure for this is, if you know

786
00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:44,120
Speaker 1: a police officers trying to do a field sobriety test

787
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 1: on somebody they've pulled over, they will ask them to

788
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:49,360
Speaker 1: hold their heads still, and then they will ask the

789
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:53,520
Speaker 1: subject to follow a moving stimulus with their eyes without

790
00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 1: moving their head, and then you move the stimulus steadily,

791
00:43:57,239 --> 00:43:59,920
Speaker 1: sort of in an arc around towards the person's side,

792
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:03,160
Speaker 1: and as they follow it with their eyes. Supposedly, there

793
00:44:03,200 --> 00:44:06,920
Speaker 1: are types of nastagmus, or these repetitive jerking movements of

794
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:11,520
Speaker 1: the eyes that are usually indicative of intoxication. Though I

795
00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:14,239
Speaker 1: should note that just in poking around a little bit,

796
00:44:14,280 --> 00:44:17,120
Speaker 1: it looks like there's some controversy over the reliability of

797
00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:19,799
Speaker 1: this test and it's used by police. Yeah, I mean,

798
00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:22,239
Speaker 1: it's not like you have a tricorder type device that

799
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:25,040
Speaker 1: you hold up and and scan the eyes. It's based

800
00:44:25,080 --> 00:44:29,719
Speaker 1: on what the police officer is observing and then reporting

801
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 1: regarding the movement the the the slight movements of the

802
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:36,040
Speaker 1: individual's eyes. Right. And so this is interesting because I

803
00:44:36,040 --> 00:44:39,560
Speaker 1: feel like now we've got at least two different explanations.

804
00:44:39,560 --> 00:44:41,920
Speaker 1: In fact, this would be getting into a whole other

805
00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:45,000
Speaker 1: canni worms. I found another explanation in a very short

806
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:49,719
Speaker 1: explainer article for the BBC by a by a zoologist

807
00:44:49,800 --> 00:44:54,520
Speaker 1: and science communicator who who framed their explanation more in

808
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:59,040
Speaker 1: terms of the brain getting desensitized to spinning input and

809
00:44:59,040 --> 00:45:02,240
Speaker 1: then deciding to ignore it, and then when you stop spinning,

810
00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:04,480
Speaker 1: the canceling out it has had to do of the

811
00:45:04,520 --> 00:45:08,799
Speaker 1: spinning input is uh is suddenly counterproductive and makes you

812
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:11,160
Speaker 1: think the body is still moving. I'm going to ignore

813
00:45:11,239 --> 00:45:13,719
Speaker 1: that one for now and look at these other main

814
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:16,680
Speaker 1: two explanations. So one is about the inertia of the

815
00:45:16,719 --> 00:45:19,640
Speaker 1: fluids in the canals in the inner ear as as

816
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 1: you spin around, and and that inertia causing a feeling

817
00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:27,160
Speaker 1: of spinning even after the body has stopped spinning. The

818
00:45:27,280 --> 00:45:30,280
Speaker 1: other is UH is about this very different thing about

819
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:33,919
Speaker 1: what's happening with the eyes when you spin around. And

820
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:36,239
Speaker 1: so I actually I was like, maybe I can get

821
00:45:36,280 --> 00:45:39,200
Speaker 1: some insight onto which of these is correct. Uh though,

822
00:45:39,239 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 1: though I guess one thing I should say is that

823
00:45:41,760 --> 00:45:46,160
Speaker 1: these explanations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I mean, it

824
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:50,760
Speaker 1: could be that both of these things contribute to dizziness. Um.

825
00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:52,920
Speaker 1: But I wanted to get some insight on this by

826
00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:55,799
Speaker 1: experimenting on myself. I was actually lying in bed last

827
00:45:55,880 --> 00:45:58,239
Speaker 1: night thinking about this, trying to sort out, like why

828
00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:02,120
Speaker 1: these two different explanations have come cross, which one could

829
00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:05,160
Speaker 1: be correct or more correct? And I decided I had

830
00:46:05,200 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 1: to get up out of bed and spin around to

831
00:46:07,520 --> 00:46:11,560
Speaker 1: test this out. So um, so I recognized this experiment

832
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:13,560
Speaker 1: is just on me. I just did it once. This

833
00:46:13,640 --> 00:46:15,640
Speaker 1: is not going to pass peer review. This is not

834
00:46:15,719 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 1: scientifically rigorous, but it was at least interesting to me.

835
00:46:19,239 --> 00:46:22,360
Speaker 1: So what what I did was I tried spinning around

836
00:46:22,400 --> 00:46:26,799
Speaker 1: for twelve revolutions uh boat in two different conditions, one

837
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:30,040
Speaker 1: with my eyes closed so I'd be unlikely to experience

838
00:46:30,160 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 1: ni stagmas, and one with my eyes open so I

839
00:46:33,160 --> 00:46:35,760
Speaker 1: would be And I was trying to go to constant speed.

840
00:46:36,400 --> 00:46:39,480
Speaker 1: I tried to keep the number of revolutions the same

841
00:46:39,560 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 1: for for each test condition um and and have the

842
00:46:43,239 --> 00:46:46,000
Speaker 1: only thing different being whether my eyes were open or closed.

843
00:46:46,480 --> 00:46:50,120
Speaker 1: So I will say I felt dizzy after both spinning sessions,

844
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:55,120
Speaker 1: but I felt significantly worse, significantly dizzy or after the

845
00:46:55,160 --> 00:46:59,600
Speaker 1: one with my eyes open. Though It's complicated because that

846
00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:02,280
Speaker 1: was the second one I did, so there could also

847
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:05,200
Speaker 1: be cumulative effects. I tried to rest in between them,

848
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:07,879
Speaker 1: but I didn't rest that long, and so there could

849
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:11,400
Speaker 1: have been cumulative effects where it wasn't necessarily that spinning

850
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 1: with the eyes open is worse, but just that I

851
00:47:13,239 --> 00:47:16,799
Speaker 1: spun around in circles twenty four times recently instead of

852
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:19,719
Speaker 1: twelve times after that one. So the other thing is

853
00:47:19,760 --> 00:47:23,320
Speaker 1: I really really do not recommend spinning in circles twenty

854
00:47:23,360 --> 00:47:28,960
Speaker 1: four times before bed I was lying there feeling pretty gross. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

855
00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:31,680
Speaker 1: As you listen to these episodes, you're going to want

856
00:47:31,719 --> 00:47:34,440
Speaker 1: to try a little bit of spinning. That's understandable and

857
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:38,840
Speaker 1: we encouraged that. But please be careful, Please be careful spinning.

858
00:47:39,200 --> 00:47:42,280
Speaker 1: Uh and you know, realize that you will probably become

859
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:44,720
Speaker 1: dizzy and you, I mean, you don't want to separate

860
00:47:44,800 --> 00:47:47,600
Speaker 1: fall or anything like that. Yeah, Uh, so I don't

861
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:50,719
Speaker 1: think my my personal experiment really settled the question, and

862
00:47:51,000 --> 00:47:54,120
Speaker 1: it could be their confounding varials variables. But I did

863
00:47:54,200 --> 00:47:58,720
Speaker 1: find that at least seemed possible to me that having

864
00:47:58,760 --> 00:48:02,760
Speaker 1: your eyes opened during spinning makes the dizziness issue significantly

865
00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:06,160
Speaker 1: worse than than spinning with the eyes closed, which would

866
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:09,040
Speaker 1: seem to lend some credence to the explanation offered by

867
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:12,920
Speaker 1: Karadmond that it has something to do with the movement

868
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:16,440
Speaker 1: of the eyes. But like I said, it could be

869
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:20,120
Speaker 1: the case that actually both of these things contribute to dizziness,

870
00:48:20,200 --> 00:48:23,160
Speaker 1: and they were just emphasizing different aspects of why we

871
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:26,279
Speaker 1: get dizzy from spinning. Though there's another idea that I

872
00:48:26,360 --> 00:48:28,920
Speaker 1: that I got, I guess maybe a hypothesis that my

873
00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:32,880
Speaker 1: experiment brought up, which is, what if dizziness from spinning

874
00:48:33,080 --> 00:48:37,400
Speaker 1: is strongly influenced by the amount of time spent spinning

875
00:48:37,960 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 1: as opposed to just the number of rotations. So if we're,

876
00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:42,959
Speaker 1: you know, in a minute, we're going to talk about

877
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:46,120
Speaker 1: like ballerinas and skaters, you would have to think that

878
00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:49,960
Speaker 1: if a skater does ten turns really fast as as

879
00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:52,760
Speaker 1: opposed to me doing you know, ten or twelve turns

880
00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:57,279
Speaker 1: pretty slow, standing in my bedroom. Uh is that you

881
00:48:57,320 --> 00:48:59,759
Speaker 1: know that the skater would have it worse. But but

882
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:02,480
Speaker 1: maybe it's actually worse to be spinning for a longer

883
00:49:02,520 --> 00:49:06,000
Speaker 1: period of time slower than a shorter period of time

884
00:49:06,040 --> 00:49:14,959
Speaker 1: really fast. Well, all right, let's let's talk a little

885
00:49:14,960 --> 00:49:18,360
Speaker 1: bit about the art of spinning, particularly as it relates

886
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:24,040
Speaker 1: to ballet dancers and figure skaters. So, uh, certainly both

887
00:49:24,040 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 1: of these involve a fair amount of spinning around in circles.

888
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:31,320
Speaker 1: That are the most amazing examples figure skaters, ballerinas, balot

889
00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:35,120
Speaker 1: ballet dancers whose feats of spinning athletics are certainly enough

890
00:49:35,120 --> 00:49:38,239
Speaker 1: to cause feelings of a vertigo in the view or

891
00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:42,520
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, and yet we don't see these individuals

892
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:46,400
Speaker 1: tremendously affected. You know, like like if of a dancer,

893
00:49:46,560 --> 00:49:50,480
Speaker 1: does you know a really impressive pirouette, Uh, they don't

894
00:49:50,480 --> 00:49:53,759
Speaker 1: immediately fall onto the floor, or at least that's not

895
00:49:53,800 --> 00:49:57,480
Speaker 1: supposed to happen. Um. The same goes for figure skaters, right,

896
00:49:57,520 --> 00:50:00,680
Speaker 1: they do some phenomenal spin and then they're out informed

897
00:50:00,680 --> 00:50:03,560
Speaker 1: to continue their routine. Right. I mean, so if I

898
00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:08,800
Speaker 1: spinning around slowly like twelve times, have to stumble to

899
00:50:08,880 --> 00:50:12,880
Speaker 1: my bed, afterwards, what how do how do you continue

900
00:50:13,040 --> 00:50:17,040
Speaker 1: a a really difficult intricate you know, executing dance moves

901
00:50:17,160 --> 00:50:21,080
Speaker 1: or or or continuing to skate. I mean skating alone

902
00:50:21,200 --> 00:50:25,040
Speaker 1: is difficult enough with your balance thrown off like it

903
00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:27,160
Speaker 1: like you would think it should be after one of

904
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:30,400
Speaker 1: those spinning moves. Yeah, and yet they're not. And what

905
00:50:30,640 --> 00:50:33,080
Speaker 1: it basically seems to come down to is that they've

906
00:50:33,120 --> 00:50:36,440
Speaker 1: essentially trained their brains not to pay as much attention

907
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:39,600
Speaker 1: to the input from from the vestibular system, so not

908
00:50:39,680 --> 00:50:42,640
Speaker 1: to be thrown off by the signals coming in. And

909
00:50:42,680 --> 00:50:45,840
Speaker 1: this is something that that comes through just continual practice

910
00:50:46,120 --> 00:50:48,960
Speaker 1: and ratcheting up of your sort of spinning tolerance. Yeah,

911
00:50:49,040 --> 00:50:51,120
Speaker 1: this seems to be what I was reading as well.

912
00:50:51,160 --> 00:50:53,680
Speaker 1: It's it seems to be one of the main explanations

913
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:56,759
Speaker 1: is just conditioning. It's like practice and conditioning of the

914
00:50:56,800 --> 00:51:01,640
Speaker 1: brain to not get as thrown off by the vestibular

915
00:51:01,680 --> 00:51:05,279
Speaker 1: system's response to spinning. Right. And it's and and that's

916
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:07,920
Speaker 1: not to discount it. It's like it's really impressive. I

917
00:51:07,960 --> 00:51:10,680
Speaker 1: was looking at a paper about this two thousand thirteen

918
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:14,520
Speaker 1: Imperial College London study published in the journal Cerebrial Cortex

919
00:51:15,520 --> 00:51:19,880
Speaker 1: by the by Nigga Enigma Tolina at all and it

920
00:51:19,920 --> 00:51:22,799
Speaker 1: was looking at why dancers don't get dizzy. So what

921
00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:25,320
Speaker 1: they did is they looked at twenty nine female dancers

922
00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:29,960
Speaker 1: and twenty female age matched controls with no dancing experience.

923
00:51:30,239 --> 00:51:32,279
Speaker 1: And this is we see this in another study we'll

924
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:34,200
Speaker 1: talk about in the second episode, where basically you have

925
00:51:34,280 --> 00:51:37,320
Speaker 1: your expert spinners and your control group is gonna consist

926
00:51:37,360 --> 00:51:41,160
Speaker 1: of people who are more or less comparable individuals, just

927
00:51:41,239 --> 00:51:45,040
Speaker 1: without that spinning experience, without that dancing experience in this case,

928
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:47,719
Speaker 1: So they took these individuals and they put them through

929
00:51:47,719 --> 00:51:50,239
Speaker 1: a series of spinning tests in a chair in a

930
00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:53,960
Speaker 1: dark room. Um then they measured the brains of the

931
00:51:54,000 --> 00:51:57,480
Speaker 1: two groups and how the volunteers reacted to the spinning,

932
00:51:57,920 --> 00:52:00,960
Speaker 1: and they found that the dancers recover faster than the

933
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:04,680
Speaker 1: non dancers. Basically, the dancers brains have adapted over years

934
00:52:04,680 --> 00:52:08,000
Speaker 1: of training to suppress the input that causes dizziness. It's

935
00:52:08,000 --> 00:52:11,600
Speaker 1: a case of training related brain plasticity. It's the sort

936
00:52:11,600 --> 00:52:13,680
Speaker 1: of thing that you know could one day be used

937
00:52:13,680 --> 00:52:15,759
Speaker 1: to actually treat other conditions. Knowledge of this could be

938
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 1: used to treat other conditions and enhance our understanding of

939
00:52:18,600 --> 00:52:22,000
Speaker 1: how the brain heals itself. Now, many ballet dancers, including

940
00:52:22,040 --> 00:52:24,480
Speaker 1: those used in the study, use something called spotting in

941
00:52:24,520 --> 00:52:28,960
Speaker 1: their training. Yeah, that explained by Karadmond mentions this that,

942
00:52:29,160 --> 00:52:32,000
Speaker 1: uh I think more so for ballet dancers than for

943
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:35,880
Speaker 1: ice skaters. Uh. Yes, the having to do with the

944
00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:38,719
Speaker 1: speed of the rotation. But the ballet dancers use this

945
00:52:38,760 --> 00:52:41,960
Speaker 1: trick of how they move the head and focus the

946
00:52:42,040 --> 00:52:46,640
Speaker 1: vision to prevent than being overwhelmed by nastagmus was the

947
00:52:46,640 --> 00:52:49,200
Speaker 1: reason he cited for it. Right. I believe this is

948
00:52:49,200 --> 00:52:51,719
Speaker 1: pretty well presented in I mean you can you can

949
00:52:51,719 --> 00:52:54,239
Speaker 1: see it in dance. And if you are like me

950
00:52:54,320 --> 00:52:56,279
Speaker 1: and most of your ballet experience these days comes from

951
00:52:56,280 --> 00:53:00,520
Speaker 1: watching ballet horror movies like The Two Suspirias and ax Swan,

952
00:53:01,160 --> 00:53:03,080
Speaker 1: then you know what I'm talking about. Like it's really,

953
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:05,840
Speaker 1: you know, interesting to watch the way their head seems

954
00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:08,440
Speaker 1: to like swing back around to the same position as

955
00:53:08,480 --> 00:53:11,920
Speaker 1: their body spins. You focus, as the dancer, you focus

956
00:53:11,920 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 1: your eyes on one area in front of you as

957
00:53:13,680 --> 00:53:16,439
Speaker 1: you spin around over and over again, and this helps

958
00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:19,160
Speaker 1: you stay steady. You keep moving your head around at

959
00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:22,400
Speaker 1: the same point while the body spins but the authors

960
00:53:22,560 --> 00:53:25,960
Speaker 1: in this particular study say that that spotting alone isn't

961
00:53:26,080 --> 00:53:30,320
Speaker 1: enough to account for the ability. And likewise, as you mentioned,

962
00:53:30,520 --> 00:53:34,640
Speaker 1: figure skaters don't really do spotting, not exactly. So basically

963
00:53:34,719 --> 00:53:37,759
Speaker 1: there's figure skaters are spinning way too fast, for one thing.

964
00:53:38,040 --> 00:53:41,000
Speaker 1: So I've read that some figure skaters do use a

965
00:53:41,160 --> 00:53:45,080
Speaker 1: form of spotting to count their revolutions. So just just

966
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:47,480
Speaker 1: counting how many times a particular spot on the ice

967
00:53:47,960 --> 00:53:51,680
Speaker 1: passes you buy? Uh. They may also instantly focus on

968
00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:54,319
Speaker 1: something as they come out of an intense spin in

969
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:57,560
Speaker 1: order to get their bearing straight, but as with ballet dancers,

970
00:53:57,600 --> 00:54:00,799
Speaker 1: figure skaters simply get used to the in I was

971
00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:03,560
Speaker 1: reading that they only really feel dizzy when they start

972
00:54:03,680 --> 00:54:07,080
Speaker 1: upping their spin levels and training, but then their their

973
00:54:07,080 --> 00:54:11,040
Speaker 1: bodies their minds adjust to that as well. Okay, so

974
00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:13,279
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's not just like there is a

975
00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:17,279
Speaker 1: trick to not feeling dizzy from spinning. It's there are

976
00:54:17,360 --> 00:54:20,080
Speaker 1: tricks like spotting, but that doesn't fully explain it. A

977
00:54:20,120 --> 00:54:23,919
Speaker 1: lot of it's probably just conditioning is just practice, right,

978
00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:26,840
Speaker 1: and the more you spin, the more your your brain

979
00:54:27,120 --> 00:54:31,200
Speaker 1: becomes accustomed to this input and realizes, Yeah, the spinning

980
00:54:31,280 --> 00:54:33,279
Speaker 1: is what we do. This is we can we can

981
00:54:33,480 --> 00:54:37,600
Speaker 1: it basically acclimatizes to the spinning reality. It makes me

982
00:54:37,640 --> 00:54:40,719
Speaker 1: wonder if you could, you know, create a generation of

983
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:44,719
Speaker 1: like super ballerinas or super skaters by by bringing them

984
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:48,800
Speaker 1: up from from infancy in an environment where they're deeply

985
00:54:48,920 --> 00:54:53,359
Speaker 1: desensitized to like different types of vestibular disorientation, like if

986
00:54:53,400 --> 00:54:55,600
Speaker 1: you maybe if you raise them in space or something.

987
00:54:57,080 --> 00:54:58,920
Speaker 1: Um well, I mean, on one hand, I feel like

988
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:01,000
Speaker 1: what you just described and him that far from like

989
00:55:01,040 --> 00:55:04,440
Speaker 1: the really hardcore world of of professional dance, right, like

990
00:55:04,640 --> 00:55:08,279
Speaker 1: to start conditioning them very young. But on the space question, uh,

991
00:55:08,600 --> 00:55:10,759
Speaker 1: I looked that up as well. You know, can you

992
00:55:10,800 --> 00:55:13,080
Speaker 1: get dizzy into space? I mean, what does dizziness and

993
00:55:13,120 --> 00:55:15,919
Speaker 1: space consists of? And I found an Avery Thompson piece

994
00:55:15,920 --> 00:55:20,239
Speaker 1: on Popular Mechanics. The discussed this, citing personal experiments, um

995
00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:23,719
Speaker 1: you know personal um, you know, informal experiments performed by

996
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:27,719
Speaker 1: astronaut Tim Peak. And basically it's a case again of

997
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:29,759
Speaker 1: of of the brain adapting. In this case, the brain

998
00:55:29,800 --> 00:55:32,560
Speaker 1: adapting to the initial feeling of spinning that one experiences

999
00:55:32,560 --> 00:55:35,600
Speaker 1: in low gravity, and the brain adapts to this change

1000
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:38,839
Speaker 1: and then it's very difficult to feel dizzy, um Peak

1001
00:55:38,960 --> 00:55:43,200
Speaker 1: says unless sudden acceleration is involved. I think this was

1002
00:55:43,239 --> 00:55:46,400
Speaker 1: the ultimate plan of that guy from Moonraker. He wanted

1003
00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:48,120
Speaker 1: to let you know what he was like going to

1004
00:55:48,239 --> 00:55:50,640
Speaker 1: sterilize the Earth or kill all the humans, and he's

1005
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:53,480
Speaker 1: like moved all of his beloved people up to the

1006
00:55:53,680 --> 00:55:56,480
Speaker 1: to the space station. Clearly he's trying to create a

1007
00:55:56,480 --> 00:56:00,360
Speaker 1: generation of super ballerinas to rule the post apocalyptic Earth.

1008
00:56:00,760 --> 00:56:04,280
Speaker 1: Oh man, yeah, Moonraker so good. I feel like Moonraker

1009
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:07,520
Speaker 1: is probably good the one Bond film we could do

1010
00:56:07,920 --> 00:56:11,439
Speaker 1: for weird house cinema, like it's the it's the weirdest. Yeah,

1011
00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:13,319
Speaker 1: I think you're right. Well, well, I don't know. Maybe

1012
00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:16,279
Speaker 1: that last pierced Bras in the movie with the invisible

1013
00:56:16,320 --> 00:56:19,440
Speaker 1: car and the castle made of ice, that that's Oh

1014
00:56:19,520 --> 00:56:21,360
Speaker 1: I never saw that one, but I yeah, I have

1015
00:56:21,480 --> 00:56:23,799
Speaker 1: heard it has some pretty bonkers elements to it. It's

1016
00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:26,360
Speaker 1: up there with Moonraker for for weirdness. Those are the

1017
00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:30,680
Speaker 1: two weirdest ones. Yeah. All right, Well, again this was

1018
00:56:30,719 --> 00:56:33,200
Speaker 1: part one. We're gonna come back for part two, and

1019
00:56:33,200 --> 00:56:35,640
Speaker 1: in part two we're going to discuss, among other things,

1020
00:56:36,160 --> 00:56:39,560
Speaker 1: um meditative states in spinning, We're gonna we're gonna discuss

1021
00:56:41,000 --> 00:56:45,000
Speaker 1: the Sufi whirling UH, Sufi mysticism and UH and the

1022
00:56:45,480 --> 00:56:47,920
Speaker 1: spinning that is involved in that and in a particular

1023
00:56:47,960 --> 00:56:51,319
Speaker 1: study that looks at at it. UH. So we hope

1024
00:56:51,320 --> 00:56:54,440
Speaker 1: that you will come back for that episode. In the meantime,

1025
00:56:54,800 --> 00:56:56,440
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff

1026
00:56:56,440 --> 00:56:58,560
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, you can find us wherever you

1027
00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:00,680
Speaker 1: get your podcasts and wherever it happens to be. We

1028
00:57:00,800 --> 00:57:04,560
Speaker 1: just asked that you rate, review and subscribe. If you

1029
00:57:04,560 --> 00:57:06,040
Speaker 1: want to find this really quickly, you can go to

1030
00:57:06,040 --> 00:57:07,680
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com and that will

1031
00:57:07,719 --> 00:57:11,920
Speaker 1: shoot you over to UH to what are I heart listing,

1032
00:57:11,960 --> 00:57:14,239
Speaker 1: and there's a place on there you can click for

1033
00:57:14,239 --> 00:57:15,879
Speaker 1: our store that I'll take you to our t shirt

1034
00:57:15,920 --> 00:57:17,400
Speaker 1: store and if you know, just for fun, if you

1035
00:57:17,400 --> 00:57:19,600
Speaker 1: want to pick up a T shirt, whether our logo

1036
00:57:19,640 --> 00:57:23,000
Speaker 1: on it, a sticker, tote bag, whatever, you can find

1037
00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:25,880
Speaker 1: it there. Huge things as always to our excellent audio

1038
00:57:25,920 --> 00:57:28,600
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get

1039
00:57:28,600 --> 00:57:30,800
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or

1040
00:57:30,800 --> 00:57:33,040
Speaker 1: any other to suggest topic for the future, just to

1041
00:57:33,120 --> 00:57:35,840
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff

1042
00:57:35,880 --> 00:57:45,600
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your

1043
00:57:45,600 --> 00:57:48,520
Speaker 1: Mind is production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts

1044
00:57:48,520 --> 00:57:51,680
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