Mechanical coupling between hair cells of the inner ear

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The sense of hearing plays a crucial role in our lives, as it helps us orient ourselves in space and communicate with each other; nevertheless, it remains one of the least understood of the senses, particularly at the first level of processing. To be sensitive to extremely faint sounds, the auditory system must detect movements at a scale comparable to atomic dimensions. This project will explore how the inner ear achieves its remarkable sensitivity. In particular, measurements will be made of the movements of hair cells, specialized cells that detect mechanical signals from incoming sound waves and convert them into electrical signals sent to the brain. Using an internal auditory organ from the frog, the tissue will be placed in the appropriate chemical environment, and movements with be recorded with a high-speed camera. The hypothesis is that the response will show synchronization (i.e., that the cells will move in unison when given a mechanical stimulus) which can serve to explain the extreme sensitivity of the whole organ. The goal is to determine how interactions between individual elements affect the behavior of the whole sensor, and thus help answer one of the long-open problems in auditory neuroscience. The project will serve to train graduate and undergraduate students in techniques at the interface of physics and sensory neuroscience, which will be complemented by new courses specifically designed for this purpose and recently introduced into the departmental curriculum.