Róbert Bárány (22 April 1876 – 8 April 1936) was an Austro-Hungarian otologist.He received the 1914 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the physiology and pathology of the vestibular apparatus.
Bárány was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He was the eldest of six children of the former Maria Hock, the daughter of a scientist, and Ignáz Bárány, born 1842 in Várpalota, who was a bank official and estate manager.His parents were Hungarian Jews.
He attended medical school at Vienna University, graduating in 1900. As a doctor in Vienna, Bárány was syringing fluid into the inner ear of a patient to relieve the patient's dizzy spells. The patient experienced vertigo and nystagmus (involuntary eye movement) when Bárány injected fluid that was too cold. In response, Bárány warmed the fluid for the patient and the patient experienced nystagmus in the opposite direction. Bárány theorized that the endolymph was sinking when it was cool and rising when it was warm, and thus the direction of flow of the endolymph was providing the proprioceptive signal to the vestibular organ. He followed up on this observation with a series of experiments on what he called the caloric reaction. The research resulting from his observations made surgical treatment of vestibular organ diseases possible. Bárány also investigated other aspects of equilibrium control, including the function of the cerebellum.
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