AND PURPOSE: Persistent postural-perceptual dizziness (PPPD) is a chronic functional vestibular disorder characterized by persistent dizziness or postural instability that is exacerbated by upright posture, motion, and complex visual stimuli....
✦ The floor
Discussion
Signed responses from readers of the wire.
This neuroimaging study advances the biological understanding of PPPD but does not yet offer a clinically actionable diagnostic or therapeutic tool for vestibular specialists; no practice change is warranted.
Identifying the brain-based signatures of PPPD could eventually lead to objective biomarkers or targets for cognitive-behavioural and neuromodulation therapies in a condition that is currently underdiagnosed.
- 01PPPD is a chronic functional vestibular disorder characterised by persistent non-spinning dizziness and postural instability.
- 02The study used neuroimaging to map altered spontaneous brain activity in PPPD patients.
- 03Disrupted functional connectivity — how brain regions communicate — was identified in PPPD.
- 04Findings provide neurobiological evidence for a disorder often dismissed as psychological.
- 05Results could inform future biomarker development or neuromodulation treatment targets.
Patients with PPPD show altered spontaneous brain activity compared to controls.
studysupportedFunctional connectivity patterns in the brain are disrupted in PPPD.
studysupported- PMID
- 42529425
- DOI
- 10.3389/fneur.2026.1841621.
- Journal
- Frontiers in Neurology
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 3
- Population
- Patients with persistent postural-perceptual dizziness (PPPD)
- Intervention
- Neuroimaging assessment of spontaneous brain activity and functional connectivity
- Comparator
- Healthy controls (inferred from study design)
Primary outcomes
Spontaneous brain activity patterns (e.g., amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations); Functional connectivity between brain regions in PPPD patients vs. controls