Sound mechanoreception by the inner ear’s hair cells begins with the deflection of their hair bundle—a cohesive tuft of protruding stereocilia that serves as the hair cell’s mechanosensory antenna. Hair-bundle deflections modulate mechanical tension in elastic elements that pull on mechanosensitive ion channels and, in turn, modulate the influx of cations into the hair cell—the transduction current. Remarkably, a dynamic interplay between channel gating and an active feedback mechanism gives rise to active hair-bundle movements—reverse transduction, including spontaneous hair-bundle oscillations. This proposal aims at studying how external and internal control parameters modulate the mechanical and electrical correlates of transduction-channel gating to specify active and passive mechanosensitivity of the hair cell.