Restoring Hearing with Light Signals (1 of 4) (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Restoring Hearing with Light Signals (1 of 4)

Caption

Deaf adult gerbils can hear again with optogenetic hearing restoration. Upon ototoxic treatment adult gerbils turned deaf due to loss of hair cells. With optogenetic stimulation they could hear again and perform a behavioural task. To this end a small optical fiber was implanted and stimulated parts of the snail shaped cochlea. The location of the auditory neurons in the cochlea is shown in orange while the stimulated area is shaded in blue. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the 11 July, issue of Science Translational Medicine, published by AAAS. The paper, by C. Wrobel at University Medical Center Göttingen in Göttingen, Germany; and colleagues was titled, 'Optogenetic stimulation of cochlear neurons activates the auditory pathway and restores auditory-driven behavior in deaf adult gerbils.'

Credit

University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany

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