Dingjun Zha, Fangyi Chen, Sripriya Ramamoorthy, Anders Fridberger, Niloy Choudhury, Steven L. Jacques, Ruikang K. Wang, Alfred L. Nuttall

Mammalian hearing is refined by amplification of the sound-evoked vibration of the cochlear partition. This amplification is at least partly due to forces produced by protein motors residing in the cylindrical body of the outer hair cell. To transmit power to the cochlear partition, it is required that the outer hair cells dynamically change their length, in addition to generating force. These length changes, which have not previously been measured in vivo, must be correctly timed with the acoustic stimulus to produce amplification.