Hair bundle dynamics under steady-state deflection

Abstract

Spontaneous oscillations exhibited by stereociliary bundles of the bullfrog sacculus provide a useful probe for the study of the hair cells' internal dynamic state. We apply deflections to hair cell bundles both in the form of steady-state offsets and slow ramps. We find that these offsets lead to significant modulation of the characteristic frequency of response, exhibiting characteristics of an infinite-period bifurcation in addition to a supercritical Hopf bifurcation. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.