鸡能教会听力研究者什么 This is Scientific American ' s 60 - second Science , I ' m Steve Mirsky . " It ' s the truth for all of our senses that they are there to convert physical energy in the surrounding world into electrical responses ,
which are the common currency that the nervous system uses ." Rockefeller University neuroscientist James Hudspeth .
" So our eyes and the photoreceptors there have to convert light into electricity . Our ears similarly have to convert mechanical vibrations in the air into electrical responses .
And the way this is done is that there are so called hair cells . . . these cells have little microscopic bristles , about a hundred of them , and on the top of each cell ,
these bristles vibrate back and forth in response to sound . That sets up an electrical signal that then goes down a nerve fiber and into the brain ."
Hudspeth , the University of Wisconsin - Madison ' s Robert Fettiplace , and the Pasteur Institute ' s Christine Petit shared the 2018 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience , for their work on the molecular and neural mechanisms of hearing .
Hudspeth and Fettiplace both spoke April 9 th at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D . C . at an event honoring 10 U . S . Nobel and Kavli Prize Laureates . The evening was sponsored by the Kavli Prize and produced by Scientific American . More from Hudspeth :
" And the real question is then is , what happens with these hair cells as they degenerate ? We lose them owing to loud sounds , we lose them owing to certain legitimate drugs , we lose just with aging .
And what can be done to repair them so that we can restore hearing ?" Robert Fettiplace : " Well , I mean there are two aspects to this , one is that in fact you could try and regrow them .
Almost all hearing loss is due to death of the hair cells or lack of formation of them in the first place . . . the cells along the cochlea are all different .
下载全新《每日英语听力》客户端,查看完整内容