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The Pioneering Work of Josef Breuer on the Vestibular System
Gerald Wiest, MD;
Robert W. Baloh, MD
Arch Neurol. 2002;59:1647-1653.
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INTRODUCTION
Although Josef Breuer is probably best known for his work with Sigmund
Freud on hysteria, he spent the most productive part of his scientific career
working on the vestibular receptors of the inner ear. With the physicist Ernst
Mach, he developed the Mach-Breuer theory of semicircular canal function.
He was the first to recognize that nystagmus resulted from endolymph flow
within the semicircular canals and that the ampullary nerve of a single canal
could sense endolymph flow in both directions. By carefully studying the anatomy
of the macules of fish, reptiles, and birds, he concluded that linear head
displacements or tilts cause the otolithic membrane to slip, bending the hairs
that project into it and thereby stimulating the underlying sensory receptors.
His "shear theory" of hair-cell stimulation is a standard in modern textbooks
of vestibular physiology. Breuer was truly a renaissance man who . . . [Full Text of this Article]
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
MATERIALS
BREUER'S SPECULATION ON HOW THE SEMICIRCULAR CANALS WORK
ERNST MACH COMES TO A SIMILAR CONCLUSION
CRUM BROWN AND HIS MODEL OF THE SEMICIRCULAR CANALS
JOINING OF FORCES BY MACH AND BREUER
BREUER'S EXPERIMENTS ON THE SEMICIRCULAR CANALS
BREUER'S EXPERIMENTS ON THE OTOLITH ORGANS, THE MACULES
OVERVIEW OF BREUER'S WORK ON THE VESTIBULAR RECEPTORS OF THE INNER
EAR
From the Departments of Neurology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
(Dr Wiest), and University of California, Los Angeles (Dr Baloh).
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