When we hear, the sensory hair cells in the cochlea of the inner ear transduce sound signals of a certain pitch and convert them for transmission to the brain. For the first time, scientists of the Göttingen Campus, the Cluster of Excellence “Multiscale Bioimaging” and the University College London have shown that a third of the hair cells are connected with each other, presumably increasing the sensitivity of the sense of hearing to quiet sounds and the reliability of signal transmission. Published in Nature Communications.