Electrically evoked otoacoustic emissions are sounds emitted from the inner ear when alternating current is injected into the cochlea. Their temporal structure consists of short- and long-delay components and they have been attributed to the motile responses of the sensory-motor outer hair cells of the cochlea. The nature of these motile responses is unresolved and may depend on either somatic ...

Aminoglycoside antibiotics strongly bind to phosphoinositides and affect their membrane distribution and metabolism. Kanamycin treatment also disrupts Rac/Rho signaling pathways to the actin cytoskeleton in the mouse inner ear in vivo. Here, we investigate the influence of kanamycin on phosphoinositide signaling in sensory cells (hair cells) of the mouse cochlea. Immunoreactivity to phosphatidy...

In order to elucidate the mechanism underlying the attenuation of streptomycin ototoxicity by tetramethylpyrazine (TMP), the present study investigated the effect of TMP on the outward K(+) current in the outer hair cells of guinea pig cochlea. Sixty guinea pigs were divided into 6 groups randomly. Auditory brainstem response (ABR) was used to observe the change in thresholds and to evaluate ot...

Outer hair cells were isolated from the guinea pig cochlea using a micromechanical non-enzymatic procedure. Depolarization of outer hair cells in the presence of 25-125 mM K+ was accompanied by a longitudinal contraction of the isolated cells. A decrease of [K+] to 5.4 mM interrupted contraction and induced a relaxation. Individual hair cells were able to undergo as many as 5 cycles of contract...

The anatomical mechanisms for processing auditory signals are extremely complex and incompletely understood, despite major advances already made with the use of electron microscopy. A major enigma, for example, is the presence in the mammalian cochlea of a double hair cell receptor system. A renewed attempt to discover evidence of synaptic coupling between the two systems in the primate cochlea...

Calcium buffers are important for shaping and localizing cytoplasmic Ca2+ transients in neurons. We measured the concentrations of the four main calcium-buffering proteins (calbindin-D28k, calretinin, parvalbumin-alpha, and parvalbumin-beta) in rat cochlear hair cells in which Ca2+ signaling is a central element of fast transduction and synaptic transmission. The proteins were quantified by cal...