Listening in Reverse: A Case for Retrograde Signaling During Auditory Inner Hair Cell Ribbon Synapse Maturation

Roos A. Voorn, Louisa S. Kuenkel, Jan F. Ahrend, Christian Vogl

Cochlear inner hair cells (IHCs) conduct rapid, sustained, and temporally precise transmission of acoustic information onto spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs). For this purpose, IHCs utilize highly specialized sensory synapses. During development, these so-called ‘ribbon’ synapses and their postsynaptic counterparts undergo extensive structural and functional refinement—a process driven by pre-sensory spontaneous acti…