In the cochlea, spiral ganglion neurons play a critical role in hearing as they form the relay between mechanosensory hair cells in the inner ear and cochlear nuclei in the brainstem. The proneural basic helix-loop-helix transcription factors Neurogenin1 (Neurog1) and NeuroD1 have been shown to be essential for the development of otocyst-derived inner ear sensory neurons. Here, we show neural c...

This paper presents an electronic system that extracts the periodicity of a sound. It uses three analog VLSI building blocks: a silicon cochlea, two Inner Hair Cell circuits and two spiking neuron chips. The silicon cochlea consists of a cascade of filters which delays (and filters) the input sound as it passes along the cascade. The time delay added by each individual filter in the cochlea inc...

The cochlea or inner ear has a remarkable ability to amplify sound signals. This is understood to derive at least in part from some active process that magnifies vibrations of the basilar membrane (BM) and the cochlear partition in which it is embedded, to the extent that it overcomes the effect of viscous damping from the surrounding cochlear fluid. Many authors have associated this amplificat...

AIM To study the state of statokinetic stability in patients with recurrent vestibular dysfunction caused by the vascular compression of the cochlea-vestibular nerve. MATERIAL AND METHODS Authors examined 30 patients with recurrent vestibular dysfunction in which neuroimaging studies revealed the vessel adjacent to the cochlea-vestibular nerve. Statokinetic stability evaluation was selected a...

The organ of Corti, housed in the cochlea of the inner ear, contains mechanosensory hair cells and surrounding supporting cells which are organized in a spiral shape and have a tonotopic gradient for sound detection. The mouse cochlea is approximately 6 mm long and often divided into three turns (apex, middle, and base) for analysis. To investigate cell loss, cell division, or mosaic gene expre...

The complex anatomy of the mammalian cochlea is most readily understood by representation in three-dimensions. However, the cochlea is often sectioned to minimize the effects of its anatomic complexity and optical properties on image acquisition by light microscopy. We have found that optical aberrations present in the decalcified cochlea can be greatly reduced by dehydration through graded eth...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Menière disease and idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss can have overlapping clinical presentation and may have similar pathophysiology. Prior studies using postcontrast 3D-FLAIR MR imaging suggest abnormal blood-labyrinth barrier permeability in both conditions, but the 2 diseases have not been directly compared by using the same imaging techniques. We hypothesi...

EVIDENCE concerning frequency analysis which was drawn together from several sources allowed the suggestion to be made that the design of the cochlea—i.e. its internal geometry—was itself a frequency analyser to a first approximation (Naftalin, 1965). Two sets of biological observations which seem to be of fundamental importance from the physical (acoustic) point of view may be cited as offerin...

Connexin26 (Cx26) and connexin30 (Cx30) are two major protein subunits that co-assemble to form gap junctions (GJs) in the cochlea. Mutations in either one of them are the major cause of non-syndromic prelingual deafness in humans. Because the mechanisms of cochlear pathogenesis caused by Cx mutations are unclear, we investigated effects of Cx30 null mutation on GJ-mediated ionic and metabolic ...

Murine monoclonal antibodies against guinea pig cochlear epithelium were generated with the goal of identifying cochlea-specific antigens and elucidating their function. To compensate for the limited amount of cochlear tissue, intrasplenic immunization was used. Hybridoma supernatants were screened by ELISA for antibody production and for binding to homogenates from cochlea, liver, lung, kidney...