Living with a vestibular disorder during the Covid-19 pandemic: An online survey study.

BACKGROUND: People with vestibular disorders experience symptoms which put them at risk of reduced wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVE: To assess the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on vestibular symptoms, access to healthcare and daily activities amongst people living with a vestibular disorder. METHODS: An online survey was completed by 124 people in the UK with a vestibular disorder. The survey incorporated the Vertigo Symptom Scale-Short Form and questions regarding health status, healthcare received, daily activities and employment during Covid-19. RESULTS: The Covid-19 pandemic affected perceptions of wellbeing. 54.1% rated their health as worse now than before the pandemic. Vertigo, unsteadiness, dizziness, tinnitus, loss of concentration/memory, and headaches were the most exacerbated symptoms. Respondents reported changes to their daily activities including reduced social contact (83%) and exercise (54.3%). Some experienced healthcare delays or received a remote appointment. Remote care was perceived as convenient, but barriers included difficulty communicating, trouble concentrating and perceived unsuitability for initial appointments. Unintended benefits of the pandemic included less social pressure, avoiding busy environments, and engaging in self-care. CONCLUSION: The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are diverse. Clinical services should be mindful that Covid-19 can exacerbate vestibular and allied neuropsychiatric symptoms that require acute, multi-disciplinary intervention, but not lose sight of the potential benefit and cost saving associated with promoting self-management and delivering remote care, especially post-diagnosis.

Examining mental simulations of uncertain events.

A great deal of research into the experiential nature of language has demonstrated that our understanding of events is facilitated through mental simulations of the described linguistic input. However, to date little is understood about how contextual uncertainty about the described event might influence the content and strength of these mental representations or the cognitive effort involved. In this article, we report a single experiment in which participants read sentences such as "The old lady [knows/thinks] that the picnic basket is open." Following a delay of 250 or 1,500 ms, they responded to pictures that varied in the physical form of the target object (matching vs. mismatching). Results revealed an expected facilitation effect for matching images, but more important, they also showed interference effects (longer reaction times) at the shorter interstimulus interval (ISI; 250 ms) following the uncertain verb thinks, as compared with the certain verb knows. At the longer ISI, this effect was no longer present. This suggests that at the short ISI, uncertain conditions required extra time to construct and map a simulation of events onto the available image. Results are discussed in terms of the mechanisms involved in representing possible events and with reference to related literature on perspective taking.