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HUMANS & GRAVITY #122

Closed sarahgaiser closed 3 years ago

sarahgaiser commented 3 years ago

Talking about the vestibular system in our inner ear.

aaceituno01 commented 3 years ago

How do humans detect gravity? Our sense of balance and spatial orientation mainly comes from the vestibular system, which is located in the inner ear. This system comprises two components: semicircular canals (which detect rotations) and otoliths (which detect linear accelerations). In total, we have three canals (one per spatial axis XYZ). Now here is where gravity joins the game: if we are still we won't detect anything. That's because gravity sets our "frame of reference" and only when we make a relative movement we can feel something. This feeling is caused by the increasing/decreasing pressure the liquid inside the vestibular system puts on the detectors as seen on the image. So that's it: we don't experience gravity itself but it sets us a "start position" so we can feel relative movements.

IMAGE SOURCE: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/comments/S0960-9822(05)00837-7 Picture_1