title: Membrane properties specialize mammalian inner hair cells for frequency or intensity encoding.
abstract: The auditory pathway faithfully encodes and relays auditory information to the brain with remarkable speed and precision. The inner hair cells (IHCs) are the primary sensory receptors adapted for rapid auditory signaling, but they are not thought to be intrinsically tuned to encode particular sound frequencies. Here I found that under experimental conditions mimicking those in vivo, mammalian IHCs are intrinsically specialized. Low-frequency gerbil IHCs (~0.3 kHz) have significantly more depolarized resting membrane potentials, faster kinetics, and shorter membrane time constants than high-frequency cells (~30 kHz). The faster kinetics of low-frequency IHCs allow them to follow the phasic component of sound (frequency-following), which is not required for high-frequency cells that are instead optimally configured to encode sustained, graded responses (intensity-following). The intrinsic membrane filtering of IHCs ensures accurate encoding of the phasic or sustained components of the cell's in vivo receptor potential, crucial for sound localization and ultimately survival.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Stuart L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Johnson
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000818:Animals; D002462:Cell Membrane / Q000502:physiology*; D005849:Gerbillinae; D006199:Hair Cells, Auditory, Inner / Q000502:physiology*; D008564:Membrane Potentials
keywords: cochlea; gerbil; hair cell; neuroscience