Vestibular recruitment: new application for an old concept.

Introduction: Vestibular recruitment is a sign of hyperexcitability of central vestibular neurons and may be characteristic of peripheral vestibular damage.

Objective: To define the post-caloric recruitment index and its ability to predict the stage of vestibular compensation and peripheral lesion.

Methods: First of all, we demonstrated that larger values in the cold post-caloric stimulation compared to warm stimulation were equivalent to vestibular recruitment observed during the sinusoidal harmonic acceleration test.