Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39477536›Full record

ReviewThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2024

The Critical Thing about the Ear's Sensory Hair Cells.

A J Hudspeth, Pascal Martin

Abstract readReview
In one paragraph

Review in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
5citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

5 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Electrical Control of the Transduction Channels' Gating Force in Mechanosensory Hair Cells.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026
    Article
  2. Review
  3. Review
  4. Amplification through local critical behavior in the mammalian cochlea.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  5. Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

A J HudspethLaboratory of Sensory Neuroscience, The Rockefeller University, New York, New York 10065 hudspaj@rockefeller.edu.
Pascal MartinPhysics of Cells and Cancer Unit, Institut Curie, PSL Research University, CNRS UMR168, Paris 75005, France.ORCID 0000-0001-6860-4677

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The capabilities of the human ear are remarkable. We can normally detect acoustic stimuli down to a threshold sound-pressure level of 0 dB (decibels) at the entrance to the external ear, which elicits eardrum vibrations in the picometer range. From this threshold up to the onset of pain, 120 dB, our ears can encompass sounds that differ in power by a trillionfold. The comprehension of speech and enjoyment of music result from our ability to distinguish between tones that differ in frequency by only 0.2%. All these capabilities vanish upon damage to the ear's receptors, the mechanoreceptive sensory hair cells. Each cochlea, the auditory organ of the inner ear, contains some 16,000 such cells that are frequency-tuned between ∼20 Hz (cycles per second) and 20,000 Hz. Remarkably enough, hair cells do not simply capture sound energy: they can also exhibit an active process whereby sound signals are amplified, tuned, and scaled. This article describes the active process in detail and offers evidence that its striking features emerge from the operation of hair cells on the brink of an oscillatory instability-one example of the critical phenomena that are widespread in physics.

Indexed as

Hair Cells, AuditoryAcoustic StimulationAnimalsHumansMechanotransduction, Cellularauditory systemcochleagating springhair bundletransductionvestibular system

Identifiers

PMID39477536
PMCPMC11529813

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.