Tonotopically arranged traveling waves in the miniature hearing organ of bushcrickets.

ABSTRACT: Place based frequency discrimination (tonotopy) is a fundamental property of the coiled mammalian cochlea. Sound vibrations mechanically conducted to the hearing organ manifest themselves into slow moving waves that travel along the length of the organ, also referred to as traveling waves. These traveling waves form the basis of the tonotopic frequency representation in the inner ear of mammals. However, so far, due to the secure housing of the inner ear, these waves only could be measured partially over small accessible regions of the inner ear in a living animal. Here, we demonstrate the existence of tonotopically ordered traveling waves covering most of the length of a miniature hearing organ in the leg of bushcrickets in vivo using laser Doppler vibrometery. The organ is only 1 mm long

SUBMITTER: Palghat Udayashankar A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3278424 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature