Francesco Gianoli

Image credit: John Lund

Hearing isn’t passive—it actively amplifies sound. Preserved outside the body, this process operates near a critical physical state, revealing a shared principle across insects and vertebrates.

In Popular Mechanics: https://ow.ly/5vyL50Y0haf

In PNAS: https://ow.ly/a3Q850Y0gTC

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Researchers keep a mammalian cochlea alive outside the body for the first time Shortly before his death in August 2025, A. James Hudspeth and his team in the Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience at The Rockefeller University achieved a groundbreaking technological advancement: the ability to keep a tiny sliver of the cochlea alive and functional outside of the body for the first time.

A mammalian cochlea has been maintained alive and functional outside the body for the first time, enabling direct observation of its biomechanics and the fundamental processes of hearing. doi.org/g927x5

Big news: I’ve been awarded an 𝐄𝐑𝐂 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭 🥳 🎉!

This means I’ll soon be starting my own lab back in Europe 🙏. It’s an extraordinary opportunity!

I am grateful to the mentors, colleagues, and friends who brought me here. And to those I’ve not yet met, who will help build what comes next.

Transcriptional Interference Gates Monogenic Odorant Receptor Expression in Ants Communication is crucial to social life, and in ants, it is mediated primarily through olfaction. Ants have more odorant receptor (OR) genes than any other group of insects, generated through tandem d...

Ants 🐜 coordinate their societies through smell 👃. They carry more odorant receptor genes than any other insect 🧬, yet each olfactory neuron must somehow select and express just one.

My brilliant former student Giacomo Glotzer and colleagues have discovered how:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Jim was one of the greatest of our time—unyieldingly rigorous, yet serious only about what mattered. His door was always open, and he was never above the small tasks. He loved etymologies, literature, rock ’n’ roll, and a bit of troublemaking. He never lost his sense of wonder. He taught me so much.

Rest in peace, Jim. The father of mechanotransduction. This photo is from the April @hhmi.org meeting. Despite battling aggressive cancer, all he wanted to do was talk about science.

Often, scientists can be territorial and unwelcoming to newcomers. Not Jim. He was an early and enthusiastic supporter of our work on PIEZO mechanically activated channels, and I appreciated that more than I can say. I wonder now if I ever told him just how much that meant to me. I should have.

YouTube video by TED The beautiful, mysterious science of how you hear | Jim Hudspeth

In honor of #WorldHearingDay, watch (and listen!) to this fabulous 2020 TED from Rockefeller's Jim Hudspeth: The Beautiful, Mysterious Science of How you Hear. www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn8N...

A. James Hudspeth, neuroscientist who unlocked secrets of hearing, has died - News A. James Hudspeth, a Rockefeller neuroscientist who discovered how sound waves are converted into electrical signals in the ear's cochlea, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan. A pioneering scientist and dedicated mentor, he was the university's F.M. ...

We are deeply saddened to share that our friend and colleague Jim Hudspeth passed away on Saturday. We will remember and continue to be inspired by Jim’s integrity, his humility, and his unwavering commitment to discovery.

An elderly person with gray hair, focused on adjusting a hearing aid placed in their ear. They hold the device with their right hand while looking closely, showcasing the intricacy of the hearing aid.

A study in Communications Psychology examines how cognitive aging relates to hearing impairment and distinct profiles of social isolation and loneliness, highlighting differences in memory and executive function trajectories. go.nature.com/4mgqSJO 🧪

How One Tiny Change in the Ear’s Wiring May Set the Stage for Hearing Decline | Hearing Health & Technology Matters Researchers at the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) and the Göttingen Cluster of Excellence “Multiscale Bioimaging” (MBExC) have shown how a minimal change in a single ion channel increases t...

"the study offers a compelling molecular explanation for hearing complaints that go unmeasured in standard clinical settings." hearinghealthmatters.org/hearing-news... #keeplistening

New Research Sheds Light on the Mechanics Behind Hearing Sensitivity | Hearing Health & Technology Matters What gives the human ear its remarkable ability to detect the faintest sounds and discern subtle shifts in pitch? For decades, scientists have recognized that our hearing depends on an “active process...

"Understanding the precise cellular mechanisms that support amplification could inform future treatments, including pharmacological or gene-based therapies." @pnas.org paper coauthored by former grantee Dr. Hudspeth hearinghealthmatters.org/hearing-news... #research #science #keeplistening

Amplification through local critical behavior in the mammalian cochlea | PNAS Hearing hinges upon the ear’s ability to enhance its responsiveness by means of an energy-expending active process that amplifies the very mechanic...

We took the #ear ’s in-built amplifier out of the body, watched it work live, and saw that it runs near a state of #criticality, a knife-edge balance that lets us hear from whispers to thunderclaps and up to 20 kHz. Birds, reptiles, and insects exploit the same physics. #Biophysics shorturl.at/AkMz9

Your ear 👂 hides a built-in amplifier to boost faint sounds. Its failure spells hearing loss for billions, yet its origin is still debated.

We managed to keep it alive outside the living organism for the first time, to finally watch it work.

doi.org/10.1016/j.he...