The workshop brought together experts in genetics, molecular and cellular biology, physiology, engineering, physics, mathematics, audiology and medicine to present current work and to review the critical issues of inner ear function. A special emphasis of the workshop was on analytical model based studies. Experimentalists and theoreticians thus shared their points of view. The topics ranged from consideration of the hearing organ as a system to the study and modeling of individual auditory cells including molecular aspects of function. Some of the topics in the book are: motor proteins in hair cells; mechanical and electrical aspects of transduction by motor proteins; function of proteins in stereocilia of hair cells; production of acoustic force by stereocilia, mechanical properties of hair cells and the organ of Corti; mechanical vibration of the organ of Corti; wave propagation in tissue and fluids of the inner ear; sound amplification in the cochlea; critical oscillations; cochlear nonlinearity, and mechanisms for the production of otoacoustic emissions. This book will be invaluable to researchers and students in auditory science.

Contents:

• Whole Organ Mechanics:
• Medial-Olivocochlear-Efferent Effects on Basilar-Membrane and Auditory-Nerve Responses to Clicks: Evidence for a New Motion Within the Cochlea (J J Guinan Jr et al.)
• Atomic Force Microscopic Imaging of the Intracellular Membrane Surface of Prestin-Expressing Chinese Hamster Ovary Cells (H Wada et al.)
• Biomechanics of Dolphin Hearing: A Comparison of Middle and Inner Ear Stiffness with Other Mammalian Species (B S Miller et al.)
• Hair Cells:
• An Experimental Preparation of the Mammalian Cochlea That Displays Compressive Nonlinearity In Vitro (A J Hudspeth & D K Chan)
• "Area Change Paradox" in Outer Hair Cells Membrane Motor (K H Iwasa)
• Outer Hair Cell Mechanics are Altered by Developmental Changes in Lateral Wall Protein Content (H C Jensen-Smith & R Hallworth)
• Stereocilia:
• Signal Transformation by Mechanotransducer Channels of Mammalian Outer Hair Cells (R Fettiplace et al.)
• The Cochlear Amplifier: Is it Hair Bundle Motion of Outer Hair Cells? (S Jia et al.)
• Emissions:
• Comparative Mechanisms of Auditory Function: Ground Sound Detection by Golden Moles (P M Narins)
• The Biophysical Origin of Otoacoustic Emissions (J H Siegel)
• A Comparative Study of Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions in Geckos and Humans (C Bergevin et al.)
• Cochlear Models:
• The Cochlea Box Model Once Again: Improvements and New Results (R Nobili & A Vetešnil)
• The Evolution of Multi-compartment Cochlear Models (A E Hubbard et al.)
• and other papers

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