Robert Fettiplace FRS is a British

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, neural circuits, and glial ...

, and Steenbock Professor of Neural and Behavioral Sciences, at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin. Founded when Wisconsin achieved statehood in 1848, UW–Madison ...

Work

Fettiplace studied the mechanism of

hearing Hearing, or auditory perception, is the ability to perceive sounds through an organ, such as an ear, by detecting vibrations as periodic changes in the pressure of a surrounding medium. The academic field concerned with hearing is audit ...

vertebrate Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with c ...

s. In 1976, he and Andrew Crawford developed a method of recording the electrical responses of

hair cell Hair cells are the sensory receptors of both the auditory system and the vestibular system in the ears of all vertebrates, and in the lateral line organ of fishes. Through mechanotransduction, hair cells detect movement in their environment. ...

s in the isolated

cochlea The cochlea is the part of the inner ear involved in hearing. It is a spiral-shaped cavity in the bony labyrinth, in humans making 2.75 turns around its axis, the modiolus. A core component of the cochlea is the Organ of Corti, the sensory or ...

of reptiles. These experiments, which were the first to give extensive quantitative records from auditory receptors, showed that each hair cell is sharply tuned to a characteristic frequency and that much of the frequency selectivity in the turtle’s ear can be attributed to

electrical resonance Electrical resonance occurs in an electric circuit at a particular ''resonant frequency'' when the impedances or admittances of circuit elements cancel each other. In some circuits, this happens when the impedance between the input and output of t ...

in the hair

cell membrane The cell membrane (also known as the plasma membrane (PM) or cytoplasmic membrane, and historically referred to as the plasmalemma) is a biological membrane that separates and protects the interior of all cells from the outside environment ( ...

. Later work proved that the resonant frequency was set by the density and kinetics of

potassium channel Potassium channels are the most widely distributed type of ion channel found in virtually all organisms. They form potassium-selective pores that span cell membranes. Potassium channels are found in most cell types and control a wide variety of c ...

s, the frequency increasing with a greater number of faster channels. At least three classes of

s are needed to cover the range of hearing: voltage- and calcium-activated (BK) channels, voltage-gated (Kv) channels, and inwardly rectifying channels. These channels work together with voltage-gated calcium channels to generate electrical resonance, a conclusion that was supported by mathematical reconstruction and simulations. This mechanism is present in all vertebrate classes except mammals. Another important development was the use of new methods of imaging hair cell stereociliary bundles and delivering force stimuli, providing the first demonstration of sub-micron active oscillations of the bundles. His subsequent work has focused on determining the properties, location and identity of the mechanically sensitive ion channels that transduce sound stimuli into electrical signals. One or more of the preceding sentences may incorporate text from the royalsociety.org website where "all text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License."

Awards and honours

Fettiplace was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1990. He was also elected a Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. In 2018, Dr. Fettiplace shared the

Kavli Prize The Kavli Prize was established in 2005 as a joint venture of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, and the Kavli Foundation. It honors, supports, and recognizes scientists for outstan ...

in Neuroscience with A. James Hudspeth and Christine Petit and in 2020 also the

Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize The Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biology or Biochemistry is an annual prize awarded by Columbia University to a researcher or group of researchers who have made an outstanding contribution in basic research in the fields of biology or biochemist ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fettiplace, Robert Year of birth missing (living people) Living people British neuroscientists University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Kavli Prize laureates in Neuroscience Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences