Vestibular-evoked balance responses are blunted in lowlanders and Tibetan highlanders with ascent to 4300 m
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Hypoxia influences postural control and vestibular function. However, the vestibular control of standing balance at high altitude is poorly understood. Furthermore, Tibetan highlanders are physiologically adapted to high altitude, but it is unclear whether vestibular-driven signals for balance within this population acclimate differently than lowlanders with ascent. This study investigated vestibular-evoked balance responses in unacclimatized lowlanders and Tibetan highlanders at low altitude (1400 m) and after 6 or 7 days of incremental ascent to high altitude (4300 m). Twenty-eight participants (15 lowlanders, 8 F, 7 M; 13 Tibetan highlanders, 7 F, 6 M) stood on a force plate facing forward with their eyes closed and underwent 90-s stochastic electrical vestibular stimulation trials at a peak-to-peak amplitude of ±2 or ±4 mA. Vestibular-evoked balance responses were quantified using cumulant density and coherence (0–5 and 5–10 Hz) between electrical vestibular stimulation and mediolateral forces. With ±2 mA stimulation, the peak-to-peak amplitude of vestibular-evoked balance responses decreased at high compared to low altitude for both groups ( P = 0.003). With ±4 mA stimulation, only lowlanders showed a reduction in peak-to-peak amplitude at high altitude ( P = 0.03), and their responses were smaller than Tibetan highlanders at high altitude ( P = 0.046). For frequency-domain outcomes, lowlanders exhibited a smaller 0–5 Hz coherence area at high compared to low altitude with ±2 mA stimulation ( P = 0.002), whereas Tibetan highlanders showed no change. No differences in coherence area were observed in either group with ±4 mA stimulation. These findings indicate that while the vestibular control of balance is blunted at high altitude for lowlanders and highlanders, the altitude effect is greater in lowlanders.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".