Stress, Cerebral Asymmetry, and the Vestibular System: Rethinking the Neurobiology of Dizziness
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12974/2313-1047.2025.12.04Keywords:
Vestibular system, Lateralization, Stress, Vestibular asymmetry, DizzinessAbstract
Stress may be defined as the perceived threat to an individual’s physical, emotional, social, economic, or bodily integrity, eliciting a coordinated set of adaptive neurobiological responses. In right-handed individuals, interoceptive self-awareness is predominantly represented in the right anterior insula, a region critically involved in integrating internal bodily states with higher-order regulatory functions. Emerging evidence indicates that threat-related stress can induce lateralized changes in right insular activity, thereby modulating the vestibular system. Such modulation may produce vestibular functional asymmetry, resulting in dizziness, postural imbalance, and a subjective sense of instability. This review synthesizes current evidence on stress-induced lateralized insular modulation and the structural and functional connectivity between the insular cortex and vestibular nuclei. We propose an integrative neurobiological model linking these mechanisms to alterations in bodily self-experience during states of threat.
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