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Updated: Jul 4, 2026

Investigating Outer Hair Cell Motility with a Combination of External Alternating Electrical Field Stimulation and High-speed Image Analysis
Published on: July 18, 2011
Outer hair cell somatic, not hair bundle, motility is the basis of the cochlear amplifier
Marcia M Mellado Lagarde1, Markus Drexl, Victoria A Lukashkina
1School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QG, UK.
Abstract:
Sensitivity, dynamic range and frequency tuning of the cochlea are attributed to amplification involving outer hair cell stereocilia and/or somatic motility. We measured acoustically and electrically elicited basilar membrane displacements from the cochleae of wild-type and Tecta(DeltaENT/DeltaENT) mice, in which stereocilia are unable to contribute to amplification near threshold. Electrically elicited responses from Tecta(DeltaENT/DeltaENT) mice were markedly similar to acoustically and electrically elicited responses from wild-type mice. We conclude that somatic, and not stereocilia, motility is the basis of cochlear amplification.
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