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.
Our ears – including our outer, middle, and inner, are our body’s organ for hearing. The real purpose of our outer ear isn’t to hold our hair back or keep our sunglasses on, but to capture sound vibrations like a cup and direct them through the skull where they are converted into action potentials in a “sensory dendrite” that is connected to the “auditory nerve” (Farabee, 2001). The brain combines the input of our two ears to determine the direction and distance of sounds.
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)
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.
from the ear to the brain. Which causes permanent hearing loss. There are a few things
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)
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 cochlea in the inner ear is shaped like the spiral shell of a snail which separates two membranes; Reissner’s Membrane and the Basilar Membrane (BM) (Moore, 2007). It consists three fluid-filled chambers that coil together; scale tympani (SV), scala vestibule (SV), and scala media (SM). However, the main important functional parts in the cochlear are; the basilar membrane which separates the scala media and the scala tympani; the organ of Corti, which contain the hair cells; and the stria vascularis which secretes the fluid in the scala media and provides an energy source to the transducer (Young et al., 2007). In the human ear the cochlear functions as a transducer as well as a frequency analyser (experimented by Von Bekeys, 1960).
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
The central nervous system consists of two parts: the brain and the spinal cord. The brain is divided into four main structures: the cerebrum, diencephalon, brainstem, and cerebellum. The brainstem is at the base of the brain, and it extends from the upper spinal cord to the rear of the cerebrum; posterior to the brainstem is the cerebellum.
In the auditory system the pressure waves in the outer ear are taken and send down the auditory canal to the tympanic membrane the cochlea can then transduce.
This is called the theosseous labyrinth. The 3 parts of this are the semicircular canals, cochlea, and vestibule. The cochlea has the vital job of sending electrical signals to the brain. Then the brain takes these signals and transfers the signals into noises and sound.
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.
The middle ear functions at the physiological level to transmit sound from the outer ear to the inner ear. The middle ear consists of an air filled space between the tympanic membrane and the inner ear. The inner ear contains three small bones, the malleus, incus, and the stapes. And tiny ligaments and muscles that support and adjust tension. The sound travels down the ear canal and strikes the tympanic membrane causing it to vibrate. The vibrations are transferred through the osscicles to the cochlea, which is the inner ear. The first bone is the malleus and it is attached to the inside surface of the tympanic membrane, the second bone is the incus, and the innermost bone is the stapes. The sound sets this whole structure into vibration transferring
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.