Hair Cell
Hair cells are the sensory receptors of both the auditory system and the vestibular system in all vertebrates. In mammals, the auditory hair cells are located within the organ of Corti on a thin basilar membrane in the cochlea of the inner ear. They derive their name from the tufts of stereocilia that protrude from the apical surface of the cell, a structure known as the hair bundle, into the scala media, a fluid-filled tube within the cochlea. Mammalian cochlear hair cells come in two anatomically and functionally distinct types: the outer and inner hair cells. Damage to these hair cells results in decreased hearing sensitivity, i.e. sensorineural hearing loss.
Read more about Hair Cell: Hair Bundles As Sound Detectors and Amplifiers, Inner Hair Cells – From Sound To Nerve Signal, Outer Hair Cells – Acoustical Pre-amplifiers, Neural Connection, Regrowth, Additional Images
Famous quotes containing the words hair and/or cell:
“Say the woman is forty-four.
Say she is five seven-and-a-half.
Say her hair is stick color.
Say her eyes are chameleon.
Would you put her in a sack and bury her,
suck her down into the dumb dirt?”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“There’s not one part of his physical being that’s like that of human beings. From his warped brain down to the tiniest argumentative cell of his huge carcass, he’s unearthly.”
—Willis Cooper. Rowland V. Lee. Wolf von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone)