• fishes and amphibians

    • lateral line system

      TITLE: senses: Mechanical senses
      SECTION: Mechanical senses
      ...water and that are used to monitor water currents caused by the fish itself and by other fish. The canals are equipped at intervals with clusters of hair cells, each with a jellylike cap known as a cupula. The cupula is displaced by water movement, thus bending the hairs beneath it, resulting in activity in the nerve. In the inner ear of higher vertebrates there are three variants of this basic...
      TITLE: mechanoreception: Mechanoreceptor function
      SECTION: Mechanoreceptor function
  • human

    • function in equilibrium

      TITLE: movement perception: Vestibular system
      SECTION: Vestibular system
      Vestibular structures for each ear also include three fluid-filled semicircular canals, each in a different plane. Each canal has a swelling (ampulla) that contains the cupula, a cluster of sensitive hairs embedded in a jellylike mound. As the head moves in the plane of a given canal, motions of the fluid deflect the cupula to produce nerve impulses. These travel through the brainstem to other...
      TITLE: human ear: Detection of angular acceleration: dynamic equilibrium
      SECTION: Detection of angular acceleration: dynamic equilibrium
      ...Anatomy of the human ear: Inner ear: Semicircular canals). When the head begins to rotate in any direction, the inertia of the endolymph causes it to lag behind, exerting pressure that deflects the cupula in the opposite direction. This deflection stimulates the hair cells by bending their stereocilia in the opposite direction. The German physiologist Friedrich Goltz formulated the...
      TITLE: human ear: Detection of angular acceleration: dynamic equilibrium
      SECTION: Detection of angular acceleration: dynamic equilibrium
      The deflection of the cupula excites the hair cells by bending the cilia atop them: deflection in one direction depolarizes the cells; deflection in the other direction hyperpolarizes them. Electron-microscopic studies have shown how this polarization occurs. The hair bundles in the cristae are oriented along the axis of each canal. For example, each hair cell of the horizontal canals has its...
    • inner ear

      TITLE: human ear: Semicircular canals
      SECTION: Semicircular canals
      ...the crista, the sensory end organ that extends across it from side to side. It is covered by neuroepithelium, with hair cells and supporting cells. From this ridge rises a gelatinous structure, the cupula, which extends to the roof of the ampulla immediately above it, dividing the interior of the ampulla into two approximately equal parts. Like the hair cells of the maculae, the hair cells of...