The sensory role of hair cells is accomplished by activating the auditory or vestibular nerve fibers that carry information into the brain. Neurotransmitter release at an afferent synapse is regulated ...

Evolution likes to borrow. It can take an already-successful biological structure and alter it until it serves a new function. Two independent groups studying the proteins that organize gut microvilli ...

Auditory sensory hair cells depend on stereocilia with precisely regulated lengths to detect sound. Since stereocilia are primarily composed of crosslinked, parallel actin filaments, regulated actin ...

The cochlea is the spiral-shaped structure within the inner ear responsible for our sense of hearing. To fully understand hearing functions and open the door to new hearing loss treatments, scientists ...

Scientists at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) report that they have discovered some key mechanisms underlying how stereocilia — the tiny hair-like ...

The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI. To determine whether stereocilia can change length, we developed techniques for imaging sound-evoked hair bundle movements at ...

Imagine, for a moment, that you are smaller than a speck of dust and in the mood for some teeny-tiny sightseeing. It’s a perfect opportunity to take a scenic trip to the inner ear. First, stroll up ...

Top: Scanning electron microscopy shows the stair-step pattern of stereocilia. Bottom: Fluorescence microscopy image shows the presence of CDH 23 (green) at the point where each short stereocilium ...

Why do some people recover from some noise exposure in a matter of hours or days? Why, in fact, are humans able to make use of the mechanically-sensitive hair cell stereocilia to hear throughout the ...

Evolution likes to borrow. It can take an already-successful biological structure and alter it until it serves a new function. Two independent groups studying the proteins that organize gut microvilli ...