Sara Leijon

Karolinska Institutet | KI · Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology - CLINTEC

Nature's fastest motors are the cochlear outer hair cells (OHCs). These sensory cells use a membrane protein, Slc26a5 (prestin), to generate mechanical force at high frequencies, which is essential for explaining the exquisite hearing sensitivity of mammalian ears. Previous studies suggest that Slc26a5 continuously diffuses within the membrane, but...

The functional role of efferent innervation of the vestibular end-organs in the inner ear remains elusive. This study provides the first physiological characterization of the cholinergic vestibular efferent (VE) neurons in the brainstem by utilizing a transgenic mouse model, expressing eGFP under a choline-acetyltransferase (ChAT)-locus spanning pr...

How do neurons compute? Two main theories compete: neurons could temporally integrate noisy inputs (rate-based theories) or they could detect coincident input spikes (spike timing-based theories). Correlations at fine timescales have been observed in many areas of the nervous system, but they might have a minor impact. To address this issue, we use...

The superior paraolivary nucleus (SPON) is a prominent structure in the auditory brainstem. In contrast to the principal superior olivary nuclei with identified roles in processing binaural sound localization cues, the role of the SPON in hearing is not well understood. A combined in vitro and in vivo approach was used to investigate the cellular p...