How Does the Ear Work?
In general, the ear consists of three major sections: the outer, middle and inner ear. Sound is collected by the outer ear and funneled down the ear canal (outer ear). The sound vibrations cause movement of the eardrum and the chain of three tiny bones connected to it (middle ear). The middle ear system serves to intensify the energy of the sound vibrations and delivers them to the cochlea (inner ear). Inside the cochlea are thousands of tiny hair-like cells that connect to fibers of the hearing (acoustic) nerve. Sound vibrations entering the cochlea cause a wave to travel through the fluid-filled organ of hearing. This wave causes movement of the hair cells which then generate electro-chemical signals which travel through the acoustic nerve to the brain where they are recognized as sounds.
The ear is one of the most wonderful instruments in our body. Without our having to do any tuning, it can pick up the tiny tick of a watch one moment and the roar of an explosion the next. The ear, however, is not the only thing we need to be able to hear. The process of hearings begins with sound. Waves of air, which we call sound waves, strike on the eardrum. We can neither see nor feel these waves, but the ear is so delicate that the slightest vibration is caught and passed on to the brain. Only when such waves reach the brain do we actually hear. The ear is made up of three main parts: an outer ear, a middle ear, and an inner ear. Certain animals can move their outer ear forward to catch sounds more easily. But since we cannot move our outer ear, it doesnt really help us much in hearing. When sound waves enter the outer ear, they travel down a canal. At the end of this canal is a thin skin, stretched tightly across a tube. This skin separates the outer from the middle ear, and it a
Sound waves are channeled by the external ear, or pinna, through the external canal. causing the tympanic membrane to vibrate. This vibration activates the tiny bones of the inner ear-the hammer,anvil and stirrup. their mechanical vibrations are passed along from the oval window to the cochlea, where they set in motion the fluid in its canal. Tiny hair cells lining the coiled basilar membrane within the cochlea bend as the fluids move, stimulating nerve endings attached to them. The mechanical energy is then transformed into neural energy and sent to the brain.
The ear has three main parts: the outer, middle, and inner ear. The outer ear (the part you can see) opens into the ear canal. The eardrum separates the ear canal from the middle ear. Small bones in the middle ear help transfer sound to the inner ear. The inner ear contains the auditory (hearing) nerve, which leads to the brain. Any source of sound sends vibrations or sound waves into the air. These funnel through the ear opening, down the ear canal, and strike your eardrum, causing it to vibrate. The vibrations are passed to the small bones of the middle ear, which transmit them to the hearing nerve in the inner ear. Here, the vibrations become nerve impulses and go directly to the brain, which interprets the impulses as sound: music, a slamming door, a voice, etc. When noise is too loud, it begins to kill the nerve endings in the inner ear. As the exposure time to loud noise increases, more and more nerve endings are destroyed. As the number of nerve endings decreases, so does your h
The ear is made up of three main sections: The outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear. The Outer Ear Sounds are received by our outer ear, which includes the pinna (auricle or outer ear) and the ear canal (external auditory meatus). The pinna captures sounds in the environment and increases the loudness of those pitches that make it easier to understand speech. The ear canal tunnels the sound to the tympanic membrane (eardrum) and helps to protect the structures of the middle ear. The Middle Ear The sound waves hit the tympanic membrane (eardrum) and cause it to vibrate. These eardrum vibrations then cause movements of the three tiny bones in the middle ear called the malleus (hammer), incus (anvil) and stapes (stirrup). Movement of these three tiny bones helps to deliver the sound vibrations to the inner ear. Delivering the sound from a relatively large eardrum to a smaller oval window (entrance way to the inner ear) also results in an amplification of the sound. The Inner Ear Th
