These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Acoustic lesions in the mammalian cochlea: implications for the spatial distribution of the 'active process'.
    Author: Cody AR.
    Journal: Hear Res; 1992 Oct; 62(2):166-72. PubMed ID: 1429258.
    Abstract:
    The spatial contribution of mechanically active hair cells to tuning and sensitivity at a single point in the mammalian cochlea has been investigated in the basal turn of the guinea pig cochlea. Following the destruction of outer hair cells with acoustic overstimulation it was possible to record apparently normal tuning and sensitivity from spiral ganglion neurones innervating inner hair cells located on the apical edges of substantial lesions. The distance between the recording site, where neurones showed normal sensitivity, and areas of the cochlea showing 60-100% of the outer hair cells either damaged or missing varied between 0.2 and 1.3 mm which incorporates approximately 70 to 450 outer hair cells. In one animal neurones that demonstrated normal sensitivity were recorded within 0.2 mm of a lesion where 67% of the outer hair cells were either missing or showed severe damage to their stereocilia and within 0.5 mm of areas of the organ of Corti showing damage to 97% of the outer hair cells. This distance includes approximately 50 inner hair cells or 180 outer hair cells. The location of these neurones, whose sharp tuning presumably mirrors basilar membrane mechanics, suggests that a substantial proportion of point tuning in the cochlea may be derived over a distance of less than 0.5 mm and involve fewer than 200 active outer hair cells.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]