Rapid mechanical stimulation of inner-ear hair cells by photonic pressure

Abstract
Data availability
Article and author information
Metrics

Abstract

Hair cells, the receptors of the inner ear, detect sounds by transducing mechanical vibrations into electrical signals. From the top surface of each hair cell protrudes a mechanical antenna, the hair bundle, which the cell uses to detect and amplify auditory stimuli, thus sharpening frequency selectivity and providing a broad dynamic range. Current methods for mechanically stimulating hair bundles are too slow to encompass the frequency range of mammalian hearing and are plagued by inconsistencies. To overcome these challenges, we have developed a method to move individual hair bundles with photonic force. This technique uses an optical fiber whose tip is tapered to a diameter of a few micrometers and endowed with a ball lens to minimize divergence of the light beam. Here we describe the fabrication, characterization, and application of this optical system and demonstrate the rapid application of photonic force to vestibular and cochlear hair cells.

Data availability

All source data can be found on Dryad:CitationAbeytunge, Sanjeewa; Gianoli, Francesco; Hudspeth, A. James; Kozlov, Andrei S. (2021), Rapid mechanical stimulation of inner-ear hair cells by photonic pressure, Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.76hdr7sww

The following data sets were generated

(2021) Rapid mechanical stimulation of inner-ear hair cells by photonic pressure
Dryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.76hdr7sww.

https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.76hdr7sww

Article and author information

Author details

Sanjeewa Abeytunge

Bioengineering, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Francesco Gianoli

Bioengineering, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-4876-7978
A James Hudspeth

Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Rockefeller University, New York, United States

For correspondence
hudspaj@rockefeller.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0295-1323
Andrei Kozlov

Bioengineering, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

For correspondence
a.kozlov@imperial.ac.uk

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1993-8341

Funding

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

A James Hudspeth

Wellcome Trust (108034/Z/15/Z)

Andrei Kozlov

Wellcome Trust (214234/Z/18/Z)

Andrei Kozlov

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All procedures were conducted according to the rules and regulations of the homeinstitution. At The Rockefeller University the procedures were approved by theInstitutional Animal Care and Use Committee. At Imperial College London, theprocedures were carried out in accordance with the U.K. Home Office Animals(Scientific Procedures) Act (1986).

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.