Evaluation of Mental Rotation Ability in Patients with Unilateral Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo

BACKGROUND: Our study aims to determine whether there are differences in mental rotation abilities between unilateral benign paroxysmal positional vertigo patients and healthy controls using object-based mental rotation tasks.

METHODS: Our study included 17 unilateral posterior canal benign paroxysmal positional vertigo patients and 20 healthy adults. Spontaneous nystagmus test, saccade test, and dynamic positional tests with videonystagmography and object-based mental rotation test with 2-dimensional images of cubes rotated at certain angles in 3-dimensional space were performed on the participants. The mental rotation test response time and the number of correct answers were compared between patients and controls. We also evaluated whether there was a relationship between saccade test parameters and mental rotation test parameters in our study.

RESULTS: No significant relationship was found between benign paroxysmal positional vertigo patients and controls on any of the dependent measures (P > .05). When we evaluated the relationship between saccadic latency and accuracy and mental rotation test response time and number of correct answers in benign paroxysmal positional vertigo patients, no significant relationship was found (P > .05).

CONCLUSION: Our findings show that unilateral, posterior canal benign paroxysmal positional vertigo does not affect object-based mental rotation performance. In our study, no correlation was found between saccadic function and mental rotation ability in unilateral benign paroxysmal positional vertigo patients.

Cite this article as: Parabakan Polat A, Demir S, Kale Ö, Kuntman BD, Erbek HS. Evaluation of mental rotation ability in patients with unilateral benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. J Int Adv Otol. 2023;19(6):529-534.