Nobel Prizes Explained: Drunk History

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Have you ever drank too much and felt like everything was spinning? If you're under the legal drinking age - have you ever experienced motion sickness?
What exactly is happening? We have a lot of things in our body that give us a sense of balance and position, and a big player is something called the vestibular apparataus. The vestibular apparatus! What a name - tucked in our ear is an amazing sensory system .
With your eyes closed, you can tell if you’re moving forward or backwards in a car. You can tell if you’re moving up or down in an elevator, if you’re turning left or right. You know exactly how your body is positioned on earth in any given time - its pretty incredible and how our body does this is even more clever.
Your vestibular system is made up of two things: the semicircular canal and otolithic organs. The semicircular canal is made up canals that are semi-circular. Since we live in 3-d, these canals Positioned orthogonal to each other, they are filled with fluid. When your head is rotated left or right, when you nod up and down, when you turn your head side to side, it moves the fluid which moves cells that convert this mechanical movement to electrical signals to your brain - what?! Right next to the semicircular canals, You also have otolilthic organs, which have crystals (otoliths) on top of it. When these crystals shift, in terms of forward/backward movement and gravitation forces, your cells again sense that and convert it to electrical signals to your brain.
When something happens to your vestibular apparatus - it often causes vertigo - or the sensation of spinning. Alcohol influences the volume and viscosity of the fluid in your ear - which offsets the balance and causes vertigo. Motion sickness occurs when there's a discrepancy between what you see with your visual system and the motion disorientation of your vestibular system.
You can also have diseases of the vestibular system proper. One of the most common is benign paroxysmal position vertigo, where an otolith crystal breaks off and starts floating around in the semicircular canal wreaking havoc. Then you have Menieres disease, due to excess fluid in the inner ear.
So this balance of the inner ear fluid is incredibly important not only in normal ears but in diseased ears. How did we understand that this was how the vestibular apparatus worked?
Enter Robert Barany. Despite contracting bone tuberculosis, which left him with permanent knee pain and stiffness, he remained active as a youngster and a curious youth. He would attribute interest in medicine to his disease.
He excelled in his studies and as a physician, became an otologist (or physician focused on diseases of the ear), with his research on the vestibular apparatus. His first discovery was on accident. While treating ear infections, he noticed when he irrigated the ear with water, some patients experienced dizziness and nystagmus, or involuntary eye movements). One day, the patient stated the water was too cold, and thus he warmed it and noticed that the patients nystagmus occurred, but now in the opposite direction. He thought about this for some time, and remembered how as a child taking a bath, certain areas of water was hot, while others was cold.
He believed that temperature induced displacement of endolymph, and this movement provided proprioception to the brain.
His work would open the door for clinical investigation to the human equilibrium system, and for that, he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1914.
He served as a surgeon in the Austrian army during WW1, where he was captured as a prisoner of war by the Russians. He would actually win the Nobel prize as a POW, with the telegram notifying him of his award not reaching him until a full year later.
It was only with the Swedish prince intervening that he was released from the camp - another year later.
Disclaimer:
These videos do not provide medical advice and are for informational purposes only. The videos are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read or seen in any LY Med video.

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[@catalinacurio]

Someone needs to explain the criteria of the Nobel Prize to trump, it is not racist hate Rhetoric...