Hair cells are the sensory receptor cells of hearing and balance. They are as important for the senses of the inner ear as chemoreceptors are for taste and smell; as photoreceptors are for vision; and ...

It does so by increasing the number of connections – called synapses – between hair cells in the ear's cochlea and the brain.

So, they obtained cochlear samples from adult mice that had normal hearing and were either exposed to psilocin or left untreated and labeled the synapses between cochlear hair cells and auditory ...