Organ of Corti vibrations are dominated by longitudinal motion in vivo

Recent observations of sound-evoked vibrations of the cochlea’s sensory organ of Corti (ooC) using optical coherence tomography (OCT) have revealed unanticipated and complex motions. Interpreting these results in terms of the micromechanical inner-ear processes that precede hair-cell transduction is not trivial since OCT only measures a projection of the true motion, which may include transverse and longitudinal displacements. We measure ooC motions at multiple OCT beam angles relative to the longitudinal axis of the basilar membrane (BM) by using the cochlea’s natural curvature and find that the relative phase between outer hair cells (OHC) and BM varies with this angle. This includes a relatively abrupt phase reversal where OHC lead (lag) the BM by ~0.25 cycles for negative (positive) beam angles, respectively. We interpret these results as evidence for significant longitudinal motion within the ooC, which should be considered when interpreting (relative) ooC vibrations in terms of inner-ear sound processing.