The Amazing Science of Hearing
- How your ear uses soft components to do a hard job
by Dr. Jonathan Ashmore, Professor of Biophysics University College London
Did you know that the ear Generates sounds as well!
Abstract: To hear sounds you use the cochlea of the inner ear, a very small delicate structure about the size of a pea buried in the bone on either side of the head. For over sixty years it has been clear that our ability to hear quiet sounds does not just depend on the physical properties of cochlear structures, but requires the concerted action of many hundreds of sensory cells, the hair cells of the inner ear. Just how has only become clearer recently. I shall talk about the machinery of hearing and what recent molecular, genetic and physiological findings have begun to tell us about its surprising properties. Age related deafness arises when a subpopulation of the sensory cells, the outer hair cells, begin to degenerate (for reasons which are not completely clear). I shall also talk about possible strategies being explored for cochlear repair.
Jonathan says he started his scientific life as theoretical physicist but decided that he wanted more instant satisfaction than waiting for the synchrotrons to produce the data about elementary particles. "I became a neuroscientist, working first on the visual system and then in the auditory system (as I did not like sitting in darkened rooms)". He has worked at the Universities of California, Sussex and Bristol before taking up the Bernard Katz Chair of Biophysics at University College London in 1996. He currently also holds the joint collaborative appointment at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was Chief Scientific Advisor to Deafness Research UK from 2001-2006