Abstract
Objective: We are still lacking a pathophysiological mechanism for functional disorders explaining the emergence and manifestation of characteristic, severely impairing bodily symptoms like chest pain or dizziness. A recent hypothesis based on the predictive coding theory of brain function suggests that in functional disorders, internal expectations do not match the actual sensory body states, leading to perceptual dysregulation and symptom perception. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the account of internal expectations and sensory input on gaze stabilization, a physiologically relevant parameter of gaze shifts, in functional dizziness.
Methods: We assessed gaze stabilization in eight functional dizziness patients and 11 healthy controls during two distinct epochs of large gaze shifts: during a counter-rotation epoch (CR epoch), where the brain can use internal models, motor planning, and resulting internal expectations to achieve internally driven gaze stabilization; and during an oscillation epoch (OSC epoch), where, due to terminated motor planning, no movement expectations are present, and gaze is stabilized by sensory input alone.
Results: Gaze stabilization differed between functional patients and healthy controls only when internal movement expectations were involved [F(1,17) = 14.63, p = 0.001, and partial η2 = 0.463]: functional dizziness patients showed reduced gaze stabilization during the CR (p = 0.036) but not OSC epoch (p = 0.26).
Conclusion: While sensory-driven gaze stabilization is intact, there are marked, well-measurable deficits in internally-driven gaze stabilization in functional dizziness pointing at internal expectations that do not match actual body states. This experimental evidence supports the perceptual dysregulation hypothesis of functional disorders and is an important step toward understanding the underlying pathophysiology.
Introduction
A hallmark of functional disorders is the major discrepancy between patients’ very real suffering from bodily symptoms, like fatigue, bowel irritation, chest pain, or dizziness, and an unimpressive exam and clinical workup, which does not account for the symptoms. There is no clear pathophysiological correlate (; ; ) matching patients’ disability, distress, and lowered quality of life, which is often even more impaired than in patients with corresponding organic disorders (; ). Diagnosis and, consequently, adequate treatment are typically delayed by many years. Such symptoms are common: dizziness, for example, has a lifetime prevalence of 30% (), and in 20–50% of the affected patients, symptoms are of functional nature (; ). This comes with high psychiatric comorbidity (; ; ) and increased healthcare utilization (). Traditionally, the absence of an explanatory organic impairment is part of the diagnostic criteria of functional disorders (e.g., in the current European diagnostic system ICD-10, World Health Organization, 2004). Today, we experience a major paradigm shift in clinical medicine, with positive signs becoming more and more important in the diagnosis of functional disorders (; ; ). Within this paradigm shift, identifying a—potentially unifying—pathophysiological mechanism is of high clinical relevance, as it would help to improve the positive definition, swift diagnosis, and treatment of functional disorders.
A recent hypothesis reflecting this paradigm shift suggests that functional disorders emerge and manifest as a consequence of “perceptual dysregulation” in the central nervous system (CNS; ; ; ; ). Within the framework of predictive coding, central processing of incoming sensory information is biased by a mismatch resulting from incorrect internal expectations leading to symptom perception (Figure 1). Providing empirical validation of this hypothesis has been a current effort: several studies report “symptom-like” somatic illusions that could be evoked in healthy participants by experimentally altering internal expectations (e.g., ; ; ). Moreover, experimentally induced symptoms are more persistent in patients with functional disorders, uncoupled from corresponding sensory input (; ). The first evidence for altered sensorimotor processing is provided by our prior study investigating head control in patients with functional dizziness (). When using combined eye–head movements to shift gaze to a new visual target, functional dizziness patients showed more pronounced head oscillations, a marker for the incongruency between sensory input and expectations in sensorimotor planning. This is a measurable marker clearly distinguishing functional patients from healthy controls. However, it does not identify the erroneous site within sensorimotor processing, which could be either faulty internal models or sensory input.
FIGURE 1
In the current paper, we assess a physiologically relevant parameter (gaze stability) in functional dizziness patients that helps to uncover this site. In our assessment, we make use of the fact that gaze stability in the context of an eye–head gaze shift to a new visual target is achieved in two epochs (Figure 2): first, a counter-rotation (CR) epoch, which is part of the planned movement toward the target, which means that efference copies and internal models can help to stabilize gaze (e.g., ; ; ); second, an oscillation (OSC) epoch, where no self-initiated movements are expected, and stabilization thus depends on sensory feedback alone, i.e., mainly the vestibulo-ocular reflex.
FIGURE 2
Internal model and sensory input contribution to these two gaze stabilization epochs have been validated in a previous study using the same experimental design (
Materials and Methods
This study investigates a dataset from patients with functional dizziness that has also been used in a prior publication (
Subjects
Eight patients with functional dizziness (aged 35 ± 13 years, mean ± SD, five females) that corresponded to the criteria for persistent postural-perceptual dizziness of the Bárány Society (
All subjects gave their written consent prior to the study’s data collection. The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Munich, the study design is in line with the Declaration of Helsinki.
Experimental Procedure
Participants performed large horizontal (combined eye–head) gaze shifts toward visual targets, which were flashed in complete darkness (analogously to
Data Analysis
Data were analyzed offline using MATLAB (MathWorks, Natick, MA, United States). Head velocity in the horizontal plane was directly derived from the horizontal inertial sensor of the EyeSeeCam measuring system. Head position was computed as the integral of head velocity over time for each time point, normalized by initial head position, where participants were asked to fixate the central LED for 10 s. Eye position was calculated from pupil rotation vectors, also normalized by initial eye position. Eye velocity was computed as the derivative of eye position at each time point. Both eye and head position and velocity were filtered with a low-pass Gaussian filter (cutoff frequency 20 Hz). Gaze position and velocity were then computed by adding up eye and head position and velocity, respectively, so that gaze (eye in space) corresponded to the sum of eye (eye in head) and head (head in space). Continuous data streams were cut into single trials, beginning with the LED onset and ending 0.1 s after the next LED onset, so that each trial represented one gaze shift. Only gaze shifts in response to 75° and 80° jumps (43 target trials) and fulfilling the requirement of a large gaze shift (i.e., measured amplitude of >40° amplitude) were considered for the analysis. To remove saccades during CR and OSC epochs, saccades were detected automatically with a gaze peak velocity criterion of 30°/s and with saccade start and end being defined as the last minimum before and the next minimum after gaze velocity peaks, respectively. Saccade detection was then inspected visually and corrected manually, by adding undetected saccades (<1% for all subjects) as well as correcting the detected minima (<1% for all subjects). Eye and head velocities during a saccade window were removed from the analysis.
Gaze gains were defined as the amount of compensatory eye movement in respect to head movement and were calculated as the slope of the linear regression between eye and head velocity profiles using the MATLAB built-in function robustfit (analogously to
Statistical Analysis
The Shapiro–Wilk test was used for normality assessment in all factor groups. Differences in gaze gains for CR epoch and OSC epoch (within-factor epoch), unweighted and weighted condition (within-factor weight), and gaze shifts to the left and right side (within-factor side) were analyzed with a 2 × 2 × 2 repeated-measures ANOVA (rmANOVA). Group differences were analyzed by adding a between-subject factor (group: healthy subjects and patients with functional dizziness) to the rmANOVA. After a significant effect, for post hoc testing, Bonferroni-corrected comparisons were computed for the respective conditions. Significance levels were the same for each statistical test (p = 0.05).
Note that there are differences in gaze gains from the left and right side [main effect side: F(1,17) = 43.4, p < 0.001, and partial η2 = 0.72], which are known from vHIT testing (
Results
To investigate gaze stabilization during combined eye–head gaze shifts, we computed the amount of compensatory eye movements for gaze stabilization during two distinct epochs that either involve motor planning and internal expectations (internally-driven CR epoch) or not (sensory-driven OSC epoch). Figure 3 shows representative eye and head movements during such gaze shifts for one healthy participant (upper panels) and one functional dizziness patient (lower panels) in the natural condition (left) and with increased head inertia (right). In the natural, unweighted condition, the healthy participant performed compensatory eye movements in the CR epoch that counteract head movements and stabilize gaze. Increasing the head inertia led to a decrease of compensatory eye movements in the healthy subject. In the functional dizziness patient, compensatory eye movements in the CR epoch were already smaller in the natural, unweighted condition and further decreased with increased head inertia. In the OSC epoch, compensatory eye movements did not differ between the healthy subject and the functional dizziness patient.
FIGURE 3

Filtered raw data of experimental movement recordings with illustrated gain computation. (A–D left) Shown are representative eye (light) and head (dark) velocity traces of one typical healthy subject (A,B) and one typical functional patient (C,D) for the unweighted (natural, A,C) and weighted condition (increased head inertia, B,D). The dashed horizontal lines display the zero line. Head oscillations—and counteracting eye movements—are illustrated in the window with increased y-axis scale (note that the functional dizziness patient display more pronounced head oscillations than the healthy participant, even in the natural condition. Group analysis confirming these differences have been published in
These characteristics were found for all subjects (Figure 4). During CR epoch, healthy subjects showed a gain of 0.97 ± 0.03 (mean ± SEM) in the unweighted condition and 0.87 ± 0.04 in the weighted condition, and functional dizziness patients displayed a gain of 0.83 ± 0.04 in the unweighted and 0.75 ± 0.03 in the weighted condition. In contrast, during OSC epoch, gaze gains of healthy controls were 0.96 ± 0.02 in the unweighted and 0.97 ± 0.03 in the weighted condition and 0.95 ± 0.03 and 0.98 ± 0.04 in the unweighted and weighted condition of functional patients, respectively. RmANOVA confirmed different gaze gains for the CR and OSC epoch [main effect epoch: F(1,17) = 67.67, p < 0.001, and partial η2 = 0.80] influenced by group [epoch∗group interaction: F(1,17) = 14.63, p = 0.001, and partial η2 = 0.463]. Post hoc testing revealed that functional dizziness patients displayed significantly lower gaze stabilization than healthy subjects in the CR epoch (p = 0.036) but not the OSC epoch (p = 0.26). Increasing the head inertia influenced gaze stabilization in dependence of the epoch [weight∗epoch interaction: F(1,17) = 20.24, p < 0.001; and partial η2 = 0.54]. Post hoc tests showed reduced gaze stabilization with increased head inertia in the CR epoch (p < 0.001), but not in the OSC epoch (p = 0.11).
FIGURE 4

Results of group analysis (controls n = 11, patients n = 8). (A) Shown are gaze gains (mean and SEM) for all factor steps of the rmANOVA, i.e., gains to the left vs. right side (within-factor side, left group vs. right group of bars), unweighted (U) vs. weighted (W, within-factor weight, left vs. right bar within each bar group), in the CR vs. OSC epoch (within-factor epoch, upper vs. lower bar plot) for the healthy controls as well as the functional patients (between-factor group, all bars within solid vs. dashed squares). (B) Shown are gaze gains (mean and SEM) for the group * epoch interaction. Gaze gains differed between healthy controls and functional patients [F(1,17) = 14.63, p = 0.001, and partial η2 = 0.463]: functional patients displayed smaller gaze gains in the CR (p = 0.036) but not the OSC epoch (p = 0.26). (C) Shown are gaze gains (mean and SEM) for the weight * epoch interaction. Gaze gains differed between the unweighted and weighted conditions [F(1,17) = 20.24, p < 0.001; and partial η2 = 0.54], being reduced with weight in the CR (p < 0.001) but not the OSC epoch (p = 0.11).
Discussion
This study reveals marked deficits in gaze stabilization in functional dizziness patients. The deficits are only present during the internally-driven CR epoch of gaze shifts, where, based on motor planning and internal models, CNS expectations about the sensory outcome of the movement are used additionally to sensory input to stabilize gaze. During sensory-driven OSC epoch, when stabilization is only based on sensory input, gaze is stable.
As far as we know, this is the first study demonstrating a direct physiologically relevant pathology of functional dizziness. Importantly, this deficit is demonstrated in patients with a structurally fully intact peripheral and central vestibular system, as assessed by neurological, neuro-otological, and neuro-ophthalmological exams and an extensive workup, including subjective visual vertical, laser ophthalmoscopy, posturography, caloric irrigation, vHIT, HITD-FT, and cranial MRI. In analogy to the intact stabilization during the OSC epoch, vHIT, i.e., vestibular-driven ocular stabilization response to passive high-frequency head movements, was intact in these patients, also on the day of study.
Remarkably, however, during the CR epoch, where functional dizziness patients can use expectations together with sensory feedback for gaze stabilization, their deficits become visible and measurable: the eyes do not sufficiently counter-rotate to compensate for the head movement. As a consequence, gaze is not stable, but drifting. This effect—already present in the natural, unweighted condition—becomes even more pronounced when the head inertia is increased. In this weighted condition, when alterations in head characteristics are not yet reflected in CNS-internal representations, expectations are derived from the unweighted head internal model. Thus, wrong information is used to drive compensatory eye movements, leading to reduced gaze stabilization.
These findings demonstrate the significant role of both intact processing of vestibular feedback and expectation formation based on correct internal models, during eye–head gaze shifts. Their contribution over the course of the gaze shifts has been previously demonstrated within the same experimental paradigm, where patients with complete bilateral vestibular loss show gaze stabilization in the CR epoch despite missing sensory input (
The idea of the role of mismatching information in symptom experience is central to the explanation of physiological and clinical vestibular vertigo. Vertigo is, by definition, a feeling of unsteadiness or movement, which occurs as a consequence of conflicting information in the CNS (
Studies investigating the direct pathophysiological mechanisms of functional dizziness are sparse. However, looking at imaging studies, several investigations report structural and functional brain alterations that can be related to our understanding of the underlying pathological mechanisms in functional dizziness patients. Structural gray matter decline (Wurthmann et al., 2017) as well as reduced functional resting state activity (
In our experiment, we were able to evoke unstable gaze in healthy controls, too: when head inertia was experimentally increased, our control subjects showed reduced compensatory eye movements in internally driven CR epoch and drifting gaze. The fact that creating a mismatch between expectations and actual sensory input by altering head mechanics is sufficient to reduce gaze stabilization provides further validation of our experimental paradigm as well as the supposed pathophysiological mechanism that underlies functional disorders. However, how this pathophysiological mechanism leads to symptom perception, remains to be seen. It is important to note that, while these findings have the potential to improve our understanding of “how” functional dizziness symptoms emerge and manifest, we cannot answer the “why” question of etiology. Furthermore, the interpretation of our study results presents only one possible explanation within a rather cognitive framework of symptom emergence and manifestation in patients with functional dizziness and does not exclude alternative interpretations. We understand this piece of evidence as a first experimental cornerstone that might guide future research toward transdiagnostic mechanisms for a positive definition of functional disorders. Further studies with functional dizziness patients as well as other patient groups are necessary to demonstrate the general validity of the perceptual dysregulation theory in functional disorders.
Nevertheless, we feel that an improved understanding of the pathophysiology of functional dizziness could constitute a great relief for both patients as well as caretakers. A measurable symptom correlate would most likely reduce stigma in this highly stigmatized patient group (
In summary, this study demonstrates unstable gaze in functional dizziness. During large eye-head gaze shifts toward visual targets gaze is unstable in the internally-driven CR epoch, i.e., when internal expectations are used to drive gaze stabilization, additionally to sensory input. In contrast, gaze is stable in the purely sensory-driven OSC epoch. Thereby, our findings provide further evidence for the predictive coding account of functional disorders, identifying—for the first time within the affected body system—internal expectations as the site where “perceptual dysregulation” arises (
Statements
Data availability statement
The original contributions presented in the study are publicly available. This data can be found here: https://doi.org/10.12751/g-node.sc1a64.
Ethics statement
This study involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ethics Committee of the University of Munich. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.
Author contributions
NL designed the study. CR collected the data. LS, DW, TW, SG, and NL analyzed the data. LS and DW created the figures. LS and NL wrote the initial manuscript. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript.
Funding
This study was supported by the German Research Foundation (Research Training Group 2175 “Perception in Context and its Neural Basis”).
Conflict of interest
NL and SG are shareholders of EyeSeeTec GmbH, manufacturers of the measurement system used. NL was a paid consultant and CR was a paid employee of EyeSeeTec GmbH. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Abbreviations
- CNS
central nervous system
- CR
counter-rotation
- HITD-FT
head impulse testing device—functional test
- ICD-10
International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Health Related Problems 10
- LED
light-emitting diode
- MRI
magnetic resonance imaging
- OSC
oscillation
- rmANOVA
repeated-measures analysis of variance
- SEM
standard error of the mean
- vHIT
video head impulse Test
- VOR
vestibulo-ocular reflex.
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Summary
Keywords
functional dizziness, pathophysiology, predictive coding, internal models, somatic symptom disorder, bodily distress disorder
Citation
Schröder L, von Werder D, Ramaioli C, Wachtler T, Henningsen P, Glasauer S and Lehnen N (2021) Unstable Gaze in Functional Dizziness: A Contribution to Understanding the Pathophysiology of Functional Disorders. Front. Neurosci. 15:685590. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.685590
Received
25 March 2021
Accepted
16 June 2021
Published
20 July 2021
Volume
15 - 2021
Edited by
Julian Keil, University of Kiel, Germany
Reviewed by
Evangelos Anagnostou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Eginition Hospital, Greece; Natela Shanidze, Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, United States
Updates

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Copyright
© 2021 Schröder, von Werder, Ramaioli, Wachtler, Henningsen, Glasauer and Lehnen.
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*Correspondence: Lena Schröder, Lena.Schroeder@tum.de
This article was submitted to Perception Science, a section of the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience
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