Our acutely sensitive inner ears are intricate micromechanical systems with more than a million moving parts. The 50 to 200 mechanically sensitive hairs of each sensory cell work in concert with those of more than 10,000 sensory cells in each ear to detect motions of the eardrum as small as the diameter of a hydrogen atom (less than a billionth of a meter). Our group is interested to understand how this system works.

Introduction to Cochlear Micromechanics

The poster below, "Experimental measurements of micromechanical transfer functions in the alligator lizard cochlea", was presented at the Association for Research in Otolaryngology Twenty-First Midwinter Research Meeting at St. Petersburg Beach, FL in February 1998.

low-res image of poster

Click on the poster for a PDF version of the poster (you will need a PDF viewer, such as XPDF or Adobe Acrobat), or Click here for an image-based walkthrough of the poster.

The poster below, "Media dependence of bleb growth in cochlear hair cells", was presented at the Association for Research in Otolaryngology Twenty-Second Midwinter Research Meeting at St. Petersburg Beach, FL in February 1999.

low-res image of poster

Click on the poster for a PDF version of the poster (you will need a PDF viewer, such as XPDF or Adobe Acrobat), or Click here for an image-based walkthrough of the poster.

MIT Micromechanics Group
Dennis M. Freeman (