Dynamic state and evoked motility in coupled hair bundles of the bullfrog sacculus

Spontaneous oscillations, one of the signatures of the active process in non-mammalian hair cells, have been shown to occur in individual hair bundles that have been fully decoupled from the overlying membrane. Here we use semi-intact preparations of the bullfrog sacculus to demonstrate that under more natural loading conditions, innate oscillations are suppressed by the presence of the overlying otolithic membrane, indicating that hair bundles lie in the quiescent rather than the unstable regime. Transepithelial electrical stimulation was then used to test the effect of evoking entrained hair bundle movement with an external stimulus. Firstly, we used a preparation in which the otolithic membrane has been partially detached, coupling only hair bundles of comparable orientations. Secondly, we deposited artificial polymer membranes on top of the epithelium so as to connect to only 10–20 cells. In both of these systems, hair bundle motion phase-locked by the electrical signal was found to induce movement in the overlying structures.