John Newman
PHYS: Science of Music
Sr. Kathy Duffy, SSJ
30 April 2015 Can They Hear Me Now?
I have listened to myself on video or a voice recording and thought it didn’t sound
anything like me. I have also misheard something someone said. I do these things all the time.
Why do these things happen? What is the process of how which we hear? It has to do with the
different parts of the ear. They are the outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear. Each part has a very
important role in the way we hear things. However, our perception of the world around us is
strongly shaped by our expectations. Expectations alter the auditory cortex of your brain and can
change the messages the ear has sent. The outer ear contains the pinna,
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It is pushed inward and outward by the pressure
waves in the ear.
The three middle ear bones (stirrups,hammer, and anvil) are connected to the eardrum
and consequently vibrated when the eardrum oscillates. These bones are called ossicles. All the
energy from the vibrations is centered in other smaller areas of the bones. Once a sound is
produced it stays near the start of the inner ear which is called the cochlea. Inside the inner ear
there is hairs that have nerve cells. Each nerve has a frequency that resonates. It strikes the
cochlear faceplate that sends waves through the cochlea. If the frequency matches
any of the frequencies of the hair cells in the cochlea, those hair cells will vibrate and resonate
with a higher amplitude. This process excites nerve cell so they get rid of electrical impulses to
the brain for processing. That how the ear works but what about things we hear? When people speak sound travels
through their vocal chords and other parts directed to the cochlea. Your head enhances it to have
a much deeper sound and have a much lower frequency than what you are used to hearing. When
you listen to yourself on recording, the bone conducted pathway that is your “normal” voice
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 ear is an extraordinary human organ that many people take for granted until it doesn’t function. It is the only device that allows the human to hear sounds in their environment. The ear is made up of many parts that distinguish various sounds through different means. The ear anatomy and physiology along with how sound waves are transmitted into meaningful sounds will help one understand how hearing loss occurs.
The physiology of hearing starts with a vibration that occurs in the air which sends an acoustic signal to the ear drum. The signal is transduced into a mechanical signal that transmits through the inner ear and the cochlear nerve. Finally, the signal is
interpreted by sound receptors on the skin. This is transmitted to the brain for integration before
The middle ear consists of three bones, the malleus, incus, and stapes. The tensor teympany which is a muscle that attaches to the malleus bone, as well as the stapes which is a muscle which attaches to the stapes bone. These muscles help to keep the bone off of the membrane that they are on to stop damage from loud noise. And lastly there is a Eustachian tube which is the middle ear as well it helps with pressure.
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)
Have you ever wondered why our ears are shaped the way they are? The curves and dips in or ears help us receive the longitudinal waves in the air. After we hear a noise, the temporal lobe in our brain allows us to comprehend that sound.
Cochlear implants are made up of four different parts: microphone, speech processor, transmitter & receiver/stimulator, and the electrode array. The microphone picks up sounds from the environment. The speech processor selects and arranges sounds from the microphone. The transmitter & receiver/stimulator receives signals from the speech processor and converts them into electrode impulses. The electrode array is a group of electrodes that collect the impulses from the stimulator and sends them to different regions of the auditory
In the article, " Hearing Sound Does not Require Ears," the author, Tabitha Callaway, states that, "Imagine meeting someone who speaks in a foreign language. You may be able to hear all of the sounds they are making, but unless you are familiar with the language they are speaking, you cannot understand what they are saying." This shows the final way how sound works, especially for humans. What the author is trying to explain is that, because the brain does not know this native language, the brain does not know what to do with the sounds. Our brains cannot translate these sound vocal cords if we do not know the language. Although the brain may be able to process the tone of the voice that is speaking ( the voice could be angry, sad, or full of fear,) we would not be able to process the words into our native language, because we do not know the language the other person is speaking. That was the final way sound
is a bone conduction that is observed in pure tone audiometry at frequencies from 1-4 kHz, and it
Just like the eyes the ears also have a good amount of layers. The first layer is the outer ear that is made from skin and cartilage, and due to its curvy shape our ears are able to catch the sound. The sound then travels from the outer ear to the tympanic membrane, this membrane forms the eardrum and vibrates in order to respond to sound waves. From the membrane the sound moves to the inner ear, the inner ear has three very small bones. These small bones send the sound information to the brain through the auditory nerve.
Also in Jason Torres`s "Sound Is All Around Us" he says that hearing is about vibrations and it is actually our brain that tells us what is happening and what the sound is. He also said to hear sound you need something on one side to receive the sound and another side to send it to your brain. So when the vibrations hit an animal
The human ear is not capable of hearing frequencies below 20 Hz, exactly the frequency range of Alpha, Theta, Delta and Beta brainwaves. If two auditory pure-sine waves, both at a frequency lower than 1500 Hz and less than 40 Hz apart, are heard dichotically, a third tone is heard at a frequency which is a difference of the two sound waves. This third tone is known as a binaural beat (Oster, G. Auditory Beats in the Brain, (1973)).
? Binaural beats are specific sounds that are created to alter brainwave frequencies. By changing someone's brainwave frequencies, through a method called brain entrainment, with binaural beats you can change your mental and physical state.
The human ear is usually broken down into three main sections, the outer ear which consists of the pinna ( fleshy part of the ear), this helps to collect and focus the sound coming into the next part of the outer ear, the auditory canal. The auditory canal is the part which leads to the ear drum and is calibrated mainly for the human voice as this would be one of the most important sounds thinking from an evolutionary standpoint. The auditory canal is usually around 26mm in length and about 7 mm in diameter, this does vary from person to person but never by a great amount, generally speaking they are all roughly the same size which helps with hearing human voice as it amplifies frequencies from 3 Khz to 12 Khz.