Organ of Corti

A cross section of the cochlea illustrating the Organ of Corti.

The organ of Corti is the organ in the inner ear of mammals that contains the auditory sensory cells, the so-called hair cells.

Structure and function

The organ of Corti is the sensitive element in the inner ear and can be thought of as the body's microphone. It is situated on the basilar membrane and protrudes into the scala media, one of the three main fluid compartments of the cochlea. It contains four rows of hair cells whose hair bundles stick out from its surface. Above them is the tectorial membrane which can move in response to sound-pressure variations in the fluid-filled compartments of the cochlea. In humans there are some 15,000 hair cells lined up along the spiral of the cochlea.

The discoverer: Alfonso Corti

The organ was named after the Italian anatomist Marquis Alfonso Giacomo Gaspare Corti (1822-1876), who conducted microscopic research of the mammalian auditory system from 1849 to 1851 at the Koelliker laboratory in Würzburg (Germany). He developed new coloring techniques in microscopic anatomy, which enabled him to distinguish and describe individual components inside the highly complex cochlea that had previously been unidentified. In 1851 he was the first to describe the core sensory organ in the mammalian cochlea, the organ of Corti.

References

• Corti A (1851) Recherches sur l'organe de Corti de l'ouïe des mammifères. Z wiss Zool 3: 1-106.