Spontaneous oscillations, signal amplification, and synchronization in a model of active hair bundle mechanics

We study spontaneous dynamics and signal transduction in a model of active hair bundle mechanics of sensory hair cells. The hair bundle motion is subjected to internal noise resulted from thermal fluctuations and stochastic dynamics of mechanoelectrical transduction ion channels. Similar to other studies we found that in the presence of noise the coherence of stochastic oscillations is maximal at a point on the bifurcation diagram away from the Andronov-Hopf bifurcation and is close to the point of maximum sensitivity of the system to weak periodic mechanical perturbations. Despite decoherent effect of noise the stochastic hair bundle oscillations can be synchronized by external periodic force of few pN amplitude in a finite range of control parameters. We then study effects of receptor potential oscillations on mechanics of the hair bundle and show that the hair bundle oscillations can be synchronized by oscillating receptor voltage. Moreover, using a linear model for the receptor potential we show that bidirectional coupling of the hair bundle and the receptor potential results in significant enhancement of the coherence of spontaneous oscillations and of the sensitivity to the external mechanical perturbations.