Hearing Essentials About Glutamate Transporters.

The article highlights the paper by Seal and colleagues that was published in a previous issue of the journal in 2008. The paper reports on vesicular glutamate transporters (VGLUTs) found in identified glutamatergic neurons. According to the author, Seal and colleagues revealed that mice lacking VGLUT3 were profoundly deaf: they failed to show a startle response to loud noises and did not exhibit auditory evoked potential. It states that electrophysiological analysis showed a defect in signaling from the inner hair cells (IHCs) of the cochlea to the auditory nerve, and morphological analysis showed abnormalities of IHC synapses.