Auditory System Essay

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.

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.

The components of the nervous system that are involved in the physical sensation is the peripheral nervous system, which is divided into two groups they are, sensory and motor divisions. The sensory impulse moves through the body by stimulating a receptor in the skin, and it goes through the sensory neurons and also travels through the afferent fibers, the spinal cord and also into the brain.

The term sensation is used when referencing the process of sensing the environment through taste, touch, sound, smell, and sight (Goldstein, 2014). Moreover, it is the process that occurs once the sensory receptor experiences stimulation, which in turn produces nerve impulses that are sent to the brain to be processed in its raw form, then perception comes into play (Goldstein, 2014). Perception is used to describe the way people interpret these sensations and tries to make sense of everything around them on a daily basis. Perception is the occurrences of the brain

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

In order to gain a better understanding of the difficulties faced by people with hearing loss I wore ear plugs for an entire day in a variety of settings. The hearing loss simulation made relatively simple parts of my day much more difficult and really showed how much hearing loss can impact daily life. As discussed in class the shift from being “able-bodied to disabled”, was quite difficult to cope with.

interpreted by sound receptors on the skin. This is transmitted to the brain for integration before

There are two factors that contribute to sound localization the first is the pinna also known as the outer ear, it is cup shaped to allow you to hear what’s in front of you. Then there is the fact that you have two ears on each side of yor head, sound in each ear may differ so the brain can determine where the sound is coming from because it is receiving sound from both.

Sound waves: Changes in pressure caused by molecules of air or fluid colliding and moving apart again.

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)

Sound is usually something that people usually take as something simple. However, sound can be a very complicated topic. Sound is a wave of vibration (called a longitudinal wave) caused by a release of energy.

Age is the most common factor in increasing hearing loss. About 30 percent of people between 65 and 74 experience some difficulty in hearing. That percentage and the severity of the loss increase with age.

The receiver is located adjacently to the transmitter on the other side of the skull and attaches to the electrode array. These two components are internal devices, with the electrode array going through the ear canal and cochlear. The receiver induces the electric impulses along the electrode array to stimulate the hearing nerve fibres in the inner ear. Signals are then sent via the hearing nerve to the brain and recognised as sound.

The ears are one of the most complex and interesting systems thats human body has and the sounds we hear are actually in many different parts deflected, absorbed, and also filtered by our different body parts. It's then collected by our pinnae (the external part of or ears), whose dimensions further affect the sound on its way into ear. There, vibrations are translated into signals, which are interpreted by your brain. In the 1930s, two scientists at Bell Labs, Harvey Fletcher and Wilden A. Munson researched this process and what they discovered has changed and affected how we as humans understand the hearing process.

converts sound waves in the air, to nerve impulses which are sent to the brain,