Our brains process sound including music through sound waves. The sound waves undergo a long process in order to reach the brain. When the sound waves are being transferred they start by going into the outer ear and then transferring through the ear canal. At the end of the ear canal is the eardrum where the sound starts to vibrate and is sent to three different bones. The Malleus, Incus, and Stapes. The bones increase the sound’s vibrations until it is sent off to the cochlea. In the cochlea there is an “elastic partition” or a division of sound, dividing the sound into two parts. This is also known as the Basilar Membrane. The cochlea has a fluid inside and once it starts to ripple then a moving wave builds along the Basilar Membrane. There
The snail like shape of the cochlear effectively boosts the strength of the vibrations caused by sound, especially for low pitches. When sound waves hit the ear drum, tiny bones in the ear transmit the vibrations to the fluid of the cochlea, where they travel along a tube that winds into a spiral. The tube’s properties gradually change along its length, so the waves grow and then die away, much as an ocean wave travelling towards the shore gets taller and narrower before breaking at the beach.
When a person with normal hearing hears the sound travels along the ear then bounces against the ear drum. The eardrum, the bones inside, and the cochlea vibrate and move thousands of tiny hairs inside the ear. When these hairs move an electrical response occurs. This electrical response goes to the hearing nerve and then it is send to the brain.
The middle ear has three ossicles (tiny bones) the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup that connect the middle ear to the inner ear. When sound enters your middle ear, it causes the ossicles to vibrate. These vibrations then move into the cochlea, which is filled with fluid. When the vibrations move the fluid that is in the cochlea, it stimulates tiny hair cells that respond to different frequencies of sound. After the tiny hair cells are stimulated, they direct the frequencies of sound into the auditory nerve, as nerve impulses. (ASHA 2013)
Bionic ears capture a sound or voice and make that sound into a digital code. The digital code runs into the eardrum and the malleus, which is a small bone in the ear that transmits vibrations. The wires run down the top of the outer ear and then run to the eardrum then to the cochlea. The bionic ear wire slides inside the cochlea and contacts where the hearing nerve was. The implant stimulates the nerve that sound travels through the cochlea. The implant acts as a simulated cochlear nerve that sends impulses to the brain as sound.
This wave information travels across middle ear cavity via a series of delicate bones: the mallus (hammer), incus (anvil) and stapes (stirrup). These ossicles act as a lever converting the lower-pressure eardrum sound vibrations into higher-pressure sound vibrations to smaller membrane called the oval window. Higher pressure is necessary because the inner ear beyond the oval window contains liquid rather than air. The auditory reflex of the middle ear muscles helps protect the inner ear from damage. The middle ear still contains the sound information in wave form; it is converted to nerve impulses in the cochlea.
The vestibule is a hollow yet small area located near the cochlea contains otolithic membranes, which detects static equilibrium. There we find three fluid filled, oval shaped semicircular canals that extend from the side of the vestibule on the opposite side the cochlea can be found detecting dynamic equilibrium. All semicircular canals are aligned with a plane of the body of anterior/posterior, superior/inferior, and left/right in order to detect movement in that plane. Hearing occurs in the ear when the auricle conducts sound waves that travel into the auditory canal and to the tympanic membrane. The tympanic membrane functions like a microphone in transforming the sound waves to movements of the membrane that move the malleus. The malleus taps on the incus that taps on the stapes in order to conduct the sound as bony vibrations to the inner ear. Tiny muscles that are attached to the ossicles either contract or relax depending on the volume of sounds traveling through the middle ear. The stapes push on a small hole within the cochlea called the oval window that in turn produces tiny ripples in the endolymph filling the cochlea with liquid. Hair cells within the cochlea detect ripples and are arranged within the spiral so each can detect a certain frequency of sound. Each hair cell in linked to a neuron from the cochlear branch of the
Cochlear Implants are surgically placed into the inner ear, or straight into the cochlea. As the cochlea’s job is used for transferring sound vibrations into the auditory nerve, the cochlea implants give the same feeling by using their own electrical signals to transfer sound into the auditory nerve, this allows the person to hear. (“O’ Riley,
The Auditory Pathway is a very complex pathway of how sound gets translated to auditory information. It first goes through the ear canal and hits the tymphatic membrane. Due to this hit, the tymphatic membrane vibrates. Then the vibrations from the tymphatic membrane proceed to the malleus, which pushes the incus, which pushes the stapes. The base of the stapes vibrates against the oval window. This vibration agitates the paralymph in the bony labyrinth. The perilymph transmits these vibrations to the Organ of Corti. The Organ of Corti has hair cells that make the movement of these hairs turn to nerve impulses. These impulses trave through the first order neurons (from Organ of Corti to Lateral Lemniscus)then to the second order neurons
In the real-world listening situations, auditory information is processed by two ears, often in the presence of background noise.(4) Binaural interaction is reflected in electrophysiological activity of neurons activated by binaural stimulation central to the cochlear nucleus. Binaural interaction is known to occur at three levels of the brainstem: superior olivary complex (SOC), lateral lemniscus and inferior colliculus (IC).(5)
Basically how sound travels through the ear is a process of many steps. The sound waves are gathered by the pinna and then funneled into the meatus. Those waves then begin to vibrate the tympanic membrane which in turn hits against the malleus. The ossicle bones then vibrate like a chain reaction. The footplate will hit the oval window which triggers the fluid in the cochlea to move. The movement sways across the different hair cells creating impulses that are sent to the brain through the eighth cranial nerve.
According to the National Institute of Health, sound is converted into electrical signals when it enters the ear. This signal travels through the auditory nerve to the auditory cortex (the part of the brain that processes sound). It is from that point the signals travel through the brain, in turn creating a range of responses. Sound can affect the brain to evoke emotions or trigger the release of stress chemicals. It can also impact the development of neural pathways.
To understand how deafness occurs, we first need to understand how people regularly hear. The ear can be split into three divisions: the external ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear. The external ear collects sound waves and sends the waves down to the ear canal which then vibrate the eardrum. The middle ear carries sound waves to the inner ear and also contains the smallest bones in the body. The middle ear also contains the Eustachian tube which connects the middle ear to the middle throat. The inner ear converts these intercepted sound waves into neural signals and also contains the cochlea. There are other things in the ear besides these three divisions such as the organ of corti which contains the cells responsible for the hearing hair cells. There are two types of these hair cells in the ear: inner and outer hair cells. Both of these cells work within the cochlea and have a stereocilia, an organelle of hair cells, but the outer hair cells function specifically in the cochlea. The outer hair cells contain the stereocilia at the top of the cell and the nucleus at the bottom. When the stereocilia bends, an electromotive response occurs which changes the cell length with every sound wave. Also in the ear is the auditory nerve. The auditory nerve has fibers that rest below the hair cells and pass the sound wave signals to the brain. The hair cells also have sensory cells which sit on top of the basilar membrane. At the tip
This paper will show the scientifically proven truth about what happens while you listen to music.
The ear is looked upon as a miniature receiver, amplifier and signal-processing system. The structure of the outer ear catching sound waves as they move into the external auditory canal. The sound waves then hit the eardrum and the pressure of the air causes the drum to vibrate back and forth. When the eardrum vibrates its neighbour the malleus then vibrates too. The vibrations are then transmitted from the malleus to the incus and then to the stapes. Together
They tympanic membrane, also known as the eardrum, starts the area of the middle ear. It vibrates in increments when sound is passed through it at high frequencies. At lower frequencies, the vibrations are less incremental and the membrane vibrates as a whole. The ossicle is a bone made up of three parts, the malleus, incus and stapes.