The vestibular system is essential to our sense of balance and spatial orientation. fMRI mapping of the vestibular system has been challenging due to the physical constraints limiting a subject’s ability to perform motion, balance, and orientation related tasks within an MRI scanner. As such, our present knowledge of the brain-wide cortical and subcortical regions that participate in processing the vestibular sense is scarce. Here, we combined fMRI and optogenetic stimulation of vestibular excitatory neurons to visualize two distinct brain-wide functional organization of central vestibular pathways originating from two major vestibular subnuclei, the superior vestibular nucleus and medial vestibular nucleus.
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