When you spin what makes you dizzy

Even though you stopped, that fluid is still moving. And it takes some time for it to finally stop. The brain receives that signal but at the same time knows the body is perfectly still. The resulting feeling? An extreme case of dizziness. She has a particular interest in brain science, the microbiome, and human physiology. Contact the author here. Knee-deep in the rising tide, a Tuvalu minister's COP26 speech makes a big impression. This system contains special sensory nerve cells that can detect the speed and direction at which our head moves.

These sensors are tightly coupled with our eye movements and with our perception of our body's position and motion through space. For instance, if we rotate our head to the right while our eyes remain focused on an object straight ahead, our eyes naturally move to the left at the same speed. This involuntary response allows us to stay focused on a stationary object. Spinning is more complicated. When we move our head during a spin, our eyes start to move in the opposite direction but reach their limit before our head completes a full degree turn.

So our eyes flick back to a new starting position midspin, and the motion repeats as we rotate. When our head rotation triggers this automatic, repetitive eye movement, called nystagmus, we get dizzy. Skaters suppress the dizziness by learning how to counteract nystagmus with another type of eye movement, called optokinetic nystagmus. Optokinetic nystagmus occurs in the opposite direction of the nystagmus and allows us to track a moving object—such as a train whizzing by—with our eyes while our head remains in place.

So now your brain thinks you are spinning in the opposite direction. This is what makes you feel dizzy again. Your eyes then flick very quickly back and forth to the right and left too, even though your head is not moving anymore. But now your head is in a different position. Instead of flicking right and left, your eyes flick up and down. So, if you lie down after spinning really fast, the brain gets two messages about what your head is doing going round and round, and lying down. These two messages join together and trick your brain into thinking the world is tilted.

Hello, curious kids! Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids theconversation. Nature abhors change. The principle of inertia, one of the most fundamental laws of physics, holds that objects resist changes in their state of motion: If an object is at rest, it will stay at rest until something forces it to budge, and if it's moving, it will keep moving until ground to a halt.

That's why spinning makes you dizzy. In the labyrinthine structure of the inner ear, there are three "semicircular canals" arranged at right angles to one another, so that each senses the movement of your head along a different axis, and all three collaborate to orient you in 3D space. The canals are filled with a fluid that sloshes around as you move.