What will you hear tomorrow?
Over the past 25 years or so, the field of hearing, in which physiologists had to be mainly physicists and biophysicists, has acquired its molecular dimension. It owes this opening to the identification of the genes responsible for deafness, which revealed the molecular basis of the mechanisms of hearing. In this closing lecture marking the end of her lectureship at the Collège de France's Genetics and Cellular Physiology Chair, created in 2002, Prof. Christine Petit will show how these advances have brought to light the elements of a coordinated and parsimonious molecular orchestration of the activity of the sensory organ, the cochlea, and how this knowledge opens the way to the search for genuine therapies for hearing impairment, broadening the range of possible interventions represented today by hearing aids and implanted devices.
The recent creation of the Institut de l'audition, co-founded by the Fondation pour l'audition and the Institut Pasteur and directed by Christine Petit, opens up a space where complementary scientific approaches to the world of sound and hearing can be integrated. To understand their specific qualities, we need to take into account data ranging from the molecule to cognition and socialization. The hope is that this Institute will help to restore the social ties that underlie hearing, at the heart of the humanization process.