First living cochlea outside the body shows how hearing really works

 



"We can now observe the first steps of the hearing process in a controlled way that was previously impossible," says co-first author Francesco Gianoli, a postdoctoral fellow in the Hudspeth lab.

Described in two recent papers (in PNAS and Hearing Research, respectively), the innovation is a product of Hudspeth's five decades of work illuminating the molecular and neural mechanisms of hearing -- insights that have illuminated new paths to preventing or reversing hearing loss.

With this advance, the researchers have also provided direct evidence of a unifying biophysical principle that governs hearing across the animal kingdom, a subject Hudspeth investigated for more than a quarter-century.

"This study is a masterpiece," says biophysicist Marcelo Magnasco, head of the Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience at Rockefeller, who collaborated with Hudspeth on some of his seminal findings. "In the field of biophysics, it's one of the most impressive experiments of the last five years."

The mechanics of hearing

Though the cochlea is a marvel of evolutionary engineering, some of its fundamental mechanisms have long remained hidden. The organ's fragility and inaccessibility -- embedded as it is in the densest bone in the body -- have made it difficult to study in action.


These challenges have long frustrated hearing researchers, because most hearing loss results from damage to sensory receptors called hair cells that line the cochlea. The organ has some 16,000 of these hair cells, so-called because each one is topped by a few hundred fine "feelers," or stereocilia, that early microscopists likened to hair. Each bundle is a tuned machine that amplifies and converts sound vibrations into electrical responses that the brain can then interpret.

#HearingResearch
#CochleaDiscovery
#AuditoryScience
#HearingMechanism
#NeuroscienceBreakthrough
#SensoryBiology
#HearingInnovation
#EarResearch
#Bioengineering
#HearingRestoration

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