How Hearing Happens - KITP Public Lecture by A. James Hudspeth

As the gateway to human communication, the sense of hearing is of enormous importance in our lives. Hearing commences with the capture of sound energy by hair cells, the ear’s sensory receptors, which then convert that energy into electrical signals that the brain can interpret. But the hair cell is not a passive recipient of stimuli; rather it uses an active process to enhance its mechanical inputs, amplifying them by as much as a thousandfold. If the active process deteriorates, we grow less sensitive to