Crystal in ear for balance?

Factual Questions
1

I just read a story in the NY Times about a woman recovering from a knife attack, and it says the following:

I know that part of the inner ear is responsible for balance, but I didn’t know there was a “crystal” in there, I thought it was some liquid. Can someone explain this reference to a “crystal”?

2

Surely they mean bone, vestibule, sacule, utricle or the like? Good gracious what an ignorant mistake, and easily fact-checked and corrected too! :mad:

3

Not exactly a crystal, but something like that. You have tiny stones called “otoconia” or “otoliths” that sit in two otolithic organs in the inner ear: the utricle and the saccule. The utricle is a rotational sensor, while the saccule is a linear acceleration (e.g., gravity) sensor. The otoliths are surrounded by a membrane that contains hair cells that point every which way. Whenever the otoliths move, they deflect hair cells, and the brain gets an input. The otoliths can, however, dislodge - usually, they fall into the semicircular canals, part of the rotation-detection system. When this happens, you get positional vertigo like you wouldn’t believe, since they screw up the orderly movement of fluid in those canals.

The trick to getting them back in place is called the Epley Maneuver. It involves basically manhandling the head to knock the otoliths back into place. If the otoliths are broken, and the pieces are rattling about in the semicircular canals, it’s possible to fill them with wax, and keep anything from moving in there. You’d lose that sensor, but on the other hand, you wouldn’t feel vertigo all the time.

4

I am experiencing dizziness and my doctor explained that tiny calcium crystals in the inner ear can break loose. These may or may not be the same thing that Crescend posted about. However, if you do a search for calcium crystals and inner ear, you will find plenty of hits on Google.

5

Er… no. Otoconia - small crystals of calcium carbonate.

6

I was wondering if the bone structures hadn’t broken when I posted. Surely if that happens, it can also affect balance? (You did see I linked to the Wikipedia article on the inner ear’s structure, right?) ETA: And I wasn’t that far off either, Crescend mentions the same things I did but goes into more detail.

7

Well no, because those three bones are used to amplify sounds. They’re not (to my limited knowledge) anything to do with the balance structures, which was referenced in the OP.