Abstract
There is a substantial, if circumstantial, weight of evidence which points to the outer hair cells (OHC) as the cellular elements involved in active hearing mechanisms. The interpretation of experiments involving efferent stimulation (Brown and Nuttall, 1984), acoustic emission (Hubbard and Mountain, 1983), ototoxic drug lesions and noise is that OHC are actively involved in cochlear micromechanics. In addition, it is now known that OHC isolated from the organ of Corti exhibit motile properties, (Brownell et al.,1985). Nevertheless, the forces generated by OHC in vivo must be sufficiently large and must be generated at a high enough rate to control macroscopic mechanics, or, equivalently, to produce the appropriate mechanical basilar membrane impedance required in theoretical models of the cochlea (Neely, 1983).
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© 1986 Plenum Press, New York
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Ashmore, J.F. (1986). The Cellular Physiology of Isolated Outer Hair Cells: Implications for Cochlear Frequency Selectivity. In: Moore, B.C.J., Patterson, R.D. (eds) Auditory Frequency Selectivity. Nato ASI Series, vol 119. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2247-4_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2247-4_12
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