The plainfin midshipman fish, Porichthys notatus, is a seasonally breeding species of marine teleost fish that generates acoustic signals for intraspecific social and reproductive-related communication. Female midshipman use the inner ear saccule as the main acoustic endorgan for hearing to detect and locate vocalizing males that produce multiharmonic advertisement calls during the breeding sea...

The saccule is a vestibular sensory organ that depends upon regulation of its luminal fluid, endolymph, for normal transduction of linear acceleration into afferent neural transmission. Previous studies suggested that endolymph in the saccule was merely derived from cochlear endolymph. We developed and used a preparation of isolated mouse saccule to measure transepithelial currents from the ext...

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) is an important model organism in hearing research. However, data on the hearing sensitivity of zebrafish vary across different reports. In the present study, the hearing sensitivity of zebrafish was examined by analysing the auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) over a range of total lengths (TLs) from 12 to 46 mm. Morphological changes in the hair cells (HCs) of the saccul...

The neotropical frog Leptodactylus albilabris exhibits the greatest sensitivity to substrate-borne vibrations (seismic stimuli) reported to date for any terrestrial animal. Nerve fibers from the source of this extraordinary sensitivity in the ear show clear stimulus-evoked modulations of their resting discharge rates in response to sinusoidal seismic stimuli with peak accelerations less than 0....

OBJECTIVE To locate components and target proteins of relevance for the cAMP and cGMP signaling networks including cAMP and cGMP phosphodiesterases (PDEs), salt-inducible kinases (SIKs), subunits of Na+, K+-ATPases, and aquaporins (AQPs) in the human saccule. METHODS The human saccule was dissected out during the removal of vestibular schwannoma via the translabyrinthine approach and immediat...

The saccule is known to play an important role in hearing in fishes. In this study we investigated spatial frequency selectivity of single saccular afferents in a teleost fish (the sleeper goby, Dormitator latifrons) to acoustic particle motion at 50-400 Hz. Saccular afferents have similar distributions of best sensitivity (-90.0 to -54.8 dB re. 1 g, mean +/- s.d.=-81.1+/-8.0 dB) and characteri...

It is known that colonic goblet cells utilize glucose to synthesize the carbohydrate portion of mucus glycoprotein. To determine the intracellular site of this synthesis, glucose-H(3) was injected into 10-g rats. At 5, 20, 40 min, 1, 1(1/2), and 4 hr after injection, segments of colon were fixed and prepared for electron microscope radioautography. By 5 min after injection, label had been incor...

Otoconia are bio-crystals anchored to the macular sensory epithelium of the utricle and saccule in the inner ear for motion sensing and bodily balance. Otoconia dislocation, degeneration and ectopic calcification can have detrimental effects on balance and vertigo/dizziness, yet the mechanism underlying otoconia formation is not fully understood. In this study, we show that selected matrix comp...

Laryngocele is an abnormal dilatation of the saccule of laryngeal ventricle, which is usually unilateral and filled with air or fluid. We present a case of bilateral laryngoceles colonized by Aspergillus species.