Figure 4
Maximum transmembrane potentials for modioli of different overall porosity. (a) Distribution of the mapped conductivity for nine hypothetical modiolus samples (S1‒S9) of different overall porosity and inhomogeneity (“Methods”). Each sample is designated by its estimated effective conductivity (S m−1) and overall porosity (%), written as S(effective conductivity in S m−1, overall porosity %). (b) Maximum transmembrane potential, Vmax, induced on the five SGNs (C1‒C5) shown in Fig. 3a (inset), for the nine modiolus samples, where the electrical conductivity for each modiolus sample was assigned using the mapped conductivity method (left panel), and the effective conductivity method (right panel). Red dotted line: Visual aid drawn through the C3 data points. Notice that for samples S2‒S5 (8.5 ≤ porosity ≤ 43.5%), Vmax using the effective conductivity model is larger than that for the mapped conductivity model. Porosity and effective conductivity for the healthy modiolus are assumed to be 20% and 0.2734 S m−1, respectively.
