How Sound Affects The Brain

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 cochlea contains thousands of outer and inner hair cells that transduce the mechanical energy of sound into electrical energy and then deliver that electrical energy to the auditory nerve. The hair cells provide information about the frequency and intensity of the sound. The auditory nerve then transmits sound information to the brain, where a variety of complex pathways help us decipher what was actually heard (Jacob, n.d.). Therefore, much of hearing as we perceive it is under the control of the brain rather than the ear. Most commonly, sensorineural hearing loss is caused by hair cell damage in the cochlea, but it can also be caused by damage to the auditory nerve. Like it was described above, sensorineural hearing loss can have a variety of causes (Jacob, n.d.). A lot of different causes will lead to different symptoms.

“Auditory Processing Disorder is a measurable neurological defect located in the higher auditory neural pathways. Sound waves enter each ear canal and are passed through the middle ear where they are “prepared” for delivery to the cochlea (part of the inner ear). The cochlea “transduces” the sound waves into electric nerve pulses, which are sent to the brain by way of the hearing nerve (VIII Cranial nerve). The eighth nerve inserts at the brainstem, where a complex network

Peripheral hearing loss, in addition to other types of hearing loss, is very common among the elderly. For those who develop permanent, peripheral hearing loss in older age, there are two main etiologies. Exposure to severe acoustic trauma can cause hearing loss at any age. However, a life-time exposure of lower level environmental noise can also lead to hearing loss due to noise. In addition, the phenomenon of presbycusis, age related hearing loss, also occurs in a large number of elderly people. This paper seeks to untangle the connections and interactions between noise induced hearing loss and presbycusis in older adults.

from the ear to the brain. Which causes permanent hearing loss. There are a few things

With all the different experiments and research coming out it has led to the conclusion that physical changes affect the brain more than chemical changes. According to the patient podcast done in class, it has shown that the different injuries that have happened through some sort of physical contact have caused severe or fatal injuries to the brain. Some of the “patients” scans either show a stroke or a concussion that were mostly fatal. On patient 3 there was a severe stroke that invaded her Pons, Frontal lobe, and Temporal lobe. These are some main area’s of the brain that have been damaged, luckily the damage was not fatal, but when she returns to her life she will have many restrictions on her mental and physical abilities. By physically

The fifth and final premise is that the musical brain is highly resilient (Jones, 2010). The aforementioned supports the idea that music has a heavy effect on

Millions of individuals around the globe regularly devote time to practice an instrument. The vast majority sees playing music as a form of entertainment. However, only a small number of these musicians are aware that musical training has effects on their brain. Recently, more and more researchers have begun to investigate further. Not only do their results conclude that musical training does, indeed, affect the brain, but they have also found that it strengthens it. Musical training benefits the brain physically, intellectually, socially, and emotionally.

The cochlea is responsible for turning sound vibrations, converting them to nerve impulses, which is then sent to the brain. Once sent to the brain they are translated

“TDLC: Music and the Brain.” Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center An NSF of Science Learning Center. University of California San Diego, n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2015

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.

At Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Lab, Kraus and colleagues measure how the brain responds when various sounds enter the ear. They’ve found that the brain reacts to sound in microseconds, and that brain waves closely resemble the sound waves. Making sense of sound is one of the most “computationally complex” functions of the brain, Kraus said, which explains why so many language and other disorders, including autism, reveal themselves in the way the brain processes sound. The way the brain responds to the “ingredients” of sound—pitching, timing and timbre—is a window into brain health and learning ability.

The question we will be researching is, what genre of music, rap, country, or pop, helps improve athletic performance? This experiment has been done before, by Miami University students. They did surveys and asked personal questions (weight, height, musical preferences etc). After this survey they conducted an experiment, it was a silent jog with 20 minute breaks in between with different music for each jog. A few questions we have are, in what way would music affect the brain? Also, why do different genres matter? Lastly, by how much will the music improve your physical performance?

Scientists couldn�t find out yet whether music influences the development of the fetus.This is a fact that we can�t be sure of yet. Several studies have demonstrated that babies can hear sound and even react to it by movement. The fetus is able to hear sounds, because hearing is the first sense that starts to develop in the embryo. The inner ear is fully developed in last trimester of pregnancy. A research demonstrates the effect of stimulation of music on the fetus, which consists of a change in heart rate. If stimulation of the brain with music could have positive effects, than this could be used to achieve great results. The majority of brain development occurs when

Sound is an important input affecting the nervous system. The brain reacts to sound input because information signals are able to travel from the outside environment, across action potentials and through the neural