The inner ear

There’s an “Inverse Piano” in Your Head

A Kavli Prize–winning scientist details the magic of transforming vibrations into sound in the inner ear

• By David Noonan on June 4, 2018

Color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph of the inside of a guinea pig inner ear showing the hearing organ, or cochlea. Running along the spiral structure are rows of sensory cells that respond to different frequencies of sound. The whole organ is just a few millimeters long. Credit: Dr. David Furness Wellcome Collection

Neuroscientist James Hudspeth has basically been living inside the human ear for close to 50 years.

In that time Hudspeth, head of the Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience at The Rockefeller University, has dramatically advanced scientists’ understanding of how the ear and brain work together to process sound. Last week his decades of groundbreaking research were recognized by the Norwegian Academy of Science, which awarded him the million-dollar Kavli Prize in Neuroscience. Hudspeth shared the prize with two other hearing researchers: Robert Fettiplace from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Christine Petit from the Pasteur Institute in Paris./.../