Vibrations from the stapes push on the oval window, and set up pressure waves in the fluid-filled cochlea, the snail-shaped inner ear that contains the organ of Corti. In the organ of Corti, vibrations are finally transformed into electrical energy by cells known as hair cells stereocilia.
The tiny hair cells lining the cochlea are stimulated by different frequencies. For example, many people with hearing loss have high-frequency hearing loss, making it harder to hear high-pitched sounds. This means the hair cells responsible for detecting high frequencies are damaged. While less common, some people have low-frequency hearing loss or mid-range hearing loss.
These hair cells translate the vibrations from sound waves into electrical impulses that then travel along a complex pathway of nerve fibers to the brain. Note: Hair cells play a vital role in your hearing. Blasting hair cells with noise is akin to trees in a hurricane, struggling to remain standing.
Sound processing likely occurs in both the cochlea and the brain, Dr. But most of the neurological processing of sound occurs in the brain, he says.
Brain cells, known as sensory neurons, transmit the sound information to various areas of the brain, including the thalamus, temporal lobe, and auditory cortex, the National Institutes of Health explains. These are known as the auditory pathways. The auditory pathways process and decode sounds, turning them into something meaningful, like a question, a honking horn, or music. They also help distinguish between nearby, important sounds and less vital background sounds, as well as processing the direction and location of sounds.
Many parts of hearing work directly in concert with the vestibular, or balance system, which is located nearby, within the semicircular canals of the inner ear. How exactly your brain works when it comes to sound is still being explored by researchers.
For example, tinnitus , or ringing in the ears, is still poorly understood, even as common as it is. Anything that obstructs the transmission of sound can lead to issues, Dr. Here, the types of hearing loss , and where the problem starts within the process:.
Hearing aids can be transformative for people with hearing loss. Fundamentally, they allow you to hear—but hearing aids are associated with other benefits as well, such as overall better health and improved quality of life, reduced loneliness, and even decreased risk of falls.
To the extent that you can, protect your hearing, avoiding loud sounds and dealing with health-related problems that could affect your hearing in a timely manner. Madeleine Burry is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and editor. She's written about health for several online publications, including Women's Health, Prevention, Health, Livestrong and Good Housekeeping.
You can follow her on Twitter lovelanewest. Read more about Madeleine. Side Menu. Assistive listening devices Amplified phones Captioned phones Hearing aid compatible phones TV hearing aid and listening devices FM systems Alerting devices.
In essence, our ears work to alter the acoustic stimulus that enters and move through our ear canals, into a form of neural code that our brains can decipher, process and comprehend. Our hearing process truly connects us to the soundscape of our surrounding environment. Our hearing system provide us with an amazing ability to identify and comprehend the most minuscule acoustic cues. In fact, our brains are capable of storing the neural equivalents of acoustic patterns like music, voices, danger sounds, and environmental sounds.
This similarity makes it much easier for us to recognize and process both familiar and unfamiliar sounds. Hearing loss occurs when sounds that are typically loud become softer and less intelligible; this is a result of our brain being misled through a loss of audibility. Information also becomes distorted as it reaches the brain, disrupting the quality of our hearing.
In these cases, even though the brain processes the sound, it is unable to make meaning from these signals. One important function of human ears, as well as the ears of other animals, is their ability to funnel sounds from the environment into the ear canal.
Though the outer ear funnels sound into the ear, this is most efficient only when sound comes from the side of the head rather than directly in front or behind it. When hearing a sound from an unknown source, humans typically turn their heads to point their ear toward where the sound might be located. People often do this without even realizing it, like when you are in a car and hear an ambulance, then move your head around to try to locate where the siren is coming from.
Some animals, like dogs, are more efficient at locating sound than humans are. Sometimes animals such as some dogs and many cats can even physically move their ears in the direction of the sound! Humans use two important cues to help determine where a sound is coming from. These cues are: 1 which ear the sound hits first known as interaural time differences , and 2 how loud the sound is when it reaches each ear known as interaural intensity differences.
If a dog were to bark on the right side of your body, you would have no problem turning and looking in that direction. This is because the sound waves produced by the barking hit your right ear before hitting your left ear, resulting in the sound being louder in your right ear. Why is it that the sound is louder in your right ear when the sound comes from the right? Because, like objects in your house that block or absorb the sound of someone calling you, your own head is a solid object that blocks sound waves traveling toward you.
When sound comes from the right side, your head will block some of the sound waves before they hit your left ear. This results in the sound being perceived as louder from the right, thereby signaling that that is where the sound came from. You can explore this through a fun activity. Close your eyes and ask a parent or friend to jingle a set of keys somewhere around your head. Do this several times, and each time, try to point to the location of keys, then open your eyes and see how accurate you were.
Chances are, this is easy for you. Now cover up one ear and try it again. With only one ear available, you may find that the task is harder, or that you are less precise in pointing to the right location. This is because you have muffled one of your ears, and therefore weakened your ability to use signals about the timing or intensity of the sounds reaching each ear.
When audio engineers create three-dimensional audio 3D audio , they must take into consideration all the cues that help us locate sound, and they must use these cues to trick us into perceiving sound as coming from a particular location. Even though with 3D audio there are a limited number of physical sound sources transmitting via headphones and speakers for example, only two with headphones , the audio can seem like it is coming from many more locations.
For example, if an audio engineer wants to create a sound that seems like it is coming from in front of you and slightly to the right, the engineer will carefully design the sound to first start playing in the right headphone and to be slightly louder in this headphone compared with the left.
Video games and movies become more immersive and life-like when paired with these tricks of 3D audio. When watching a movie, for example, sets of speakers within the movie theater can focus the sound direction to allow for a match between what you are seeing and what you are hearing. For example, imagine that you are watching a movie and an actress is having a phone conversation on the right side of the screen.
Her speech begins to play mostly through the right speakers, but as she moves on the screen from right to left, the sound follows her gradually and smoothly.
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