For the first time, researchers at the Göttingen Campus have succeeded in examining the tiny synapses in the inner ear — the contact points between hair cells and auditory nerve cells — at a molecular level. They demonstrated that ion channels and other essential hearing proteins are organised in specific patterns. This arrangement optimises the transmission of auditory information to the brain. These findings could contribute to the development of therapies for hearing disorders caused by problems at the synapse. The results have been published in the journal Science Advances.
You can find the press release (in German) here.
Prof. Dr. Tobias Moser, Director of the Institute for Auditory Neuroscience at University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG), spokesperson at the Göttingen Cluster of Excellence ‘Multiscale Bioimaging: From Molecular Machines to Networks of Excitable Cells’ (MBExC) and spokesperson at the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1690 ‘Disease Mechanisms and Functional Restoration of Sensory and Motor Systems’ (left; photo: umg/frank stefan kimmel), and Dr. Rohan Kapoor, former postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Auditory Neuroscience at UMG (right; photo: umg/rohan kapoor).
