Vestibular Hair Cells: Stabilizing Vision and Balance

Sensory receptor cells—hair cells—in the vestibular part of the inner ear send signals to the brain conveying the tilt and motions of your head, allowing the brain to reflexively compensate for head motions in order to stabilize vision and balance. Normally we are unaware of these compensatory operations, but sudden loss of vestibular hair cell function causes disturbing vertigo, shaky vision, and general disorientation. Efforts to develop clinical repair and replacement strategies—in process but not yet successful—require greater understanding of how vestibular hair cells typically function.

Ruth Anne Eatock, Ph.D., discusses new developments in the nature and significance of striking features unique to the vestibular hair cells and synapses of mammals, birds and reptiles. As these animals descend from the stem reptiles that left water habitats for land, their vestibular hair cells may have evolved in tandem with locomotion mechanisms to support vision and balance while moving over land.

Eatock is a professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago. Research in her lab focuses on how the mammalian vestibular inner ear is organized and specialized to provide information to the brain about different kinds of head motions. She is a 1987–1988 and 1994 Emerging Research Grants scientist and a former member of HHF’s Board of Directors.

HHF research webinars highlight the significant findings by Emerging Research Grants scientists. Our ERG program provides seed funding to early stage investigators, including in underfunded areas of otology, and these presentations underscore the critical impact this funding has had on both research advances as well as the scientists themselves. All webinars are captioned live and recorded with captions. To get alerts about webinars, please click here.

The series is moderated by Anil K. Lalwani, M.D., a member of HHF's Board of Directors and the head of HHF's Council of Scientific Trustees, which oversees the ERG program. He is a professor and the vice chair for research in the department of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery, the associate dean for student research at Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a codirector at the Columbia Cochlear Implant Program.