High‐Pass Filtering at Vestibular Frequencies by Transducer Adaptation in Mammalian Saccular Hair Cells

The mammalian saccule detects head tilt and low-frequency head accelerations as well as higher-frequency bone vibrations and sounds. It has two different hair cell types, I and II, dispersed throughout two morphologically distinct regions, the striola and extrastriola. Afferents from the two zones have distinct response dynamics which may arise partly from zonal differences in hair cell properties. We find that type II hair cells in the rat saccular epithelium adapt with a time course appropriate for influencing afferent responses to head motions. Moreover, striolar type II hair cells adapted by a greater extent than extrastriolar type II hair cells and had greater phase leads in the mid-frequency range (5-50 Hz). These differences suggest that hair cell transduction may contribute to zonal differences in the adaptation of vestibular afferents to head motions.