A new study – the virtual reality in the subway – has revealed that the sounds we are exposed to in crowded places and train stations can cause inconvenience to patients who suffer from dizziness and imbalance of the body during travel and movement due to a disorder in the inner ear affects balance and known as vestibular insufficiency.
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of New York in the United States of America, and its results were published in Plos One on January 24, and the Yorik Alrt website was written about.
The vestibular system consists of a network of organs in the inner ear that monitors head movements and position. The brain uses this information, information from the eyes and joints, to maintain the body’s balance.
It has long been proven that visual information affects the balance of the body, for example it can cause strong lights and images that contain rotating swirls for some people.
“People with vestibule palaces face difficulty in some places such as crowded streets or train stations.
“The visual information may cause them to lose balance, or they may cause them anxiety or dizziness. The sounds are usually taken into account during physical therapy, which may make the results of our study affect future treatments,” she added.
Virtual
The researchers conducted an experiment on 69 participants divided into two groups: a group of healthy people and a group of patients who suffer from a single -side vestibular function that affects one ear.
Participants wore the virtual reality headphone that mimics the experience of being in the New York City Tunnels. While they were watching and hearing the sounds of the metro, they stood on a platform that measures their bodies, and the headphone recorded the movement of their heads, and these movements reflect the balance of the body.
Participants are exposed to various scenarios that occur in the subway such as displaying fixed images, moving in silence, white noise, or associated with registered subway sounds.
The term white noise means voices that hide other sounds that may occur naturally in the environment. If you live in a city, for example, white noise can help block the noise -related noise.
White noise blocks other sounds, a noise that contains all frequencies across the audio sound spectrum of equal proportions, according to the “Sleep Foundation” website in the United States.
The motion images accompanied by sound (white noise sound or subway sounds) led to the largest swing of the group that suffers from a weak vestibular function.
This swing was evident through body movements forward and back, as well as head movements from left to right, tilt the head up and down. The sound conditions did not affect the balance of healthy individuals.