Hearing is the sense of sound perception. Humans can hear a wide range of sounds, being able to detect a wide variety of differences of sounds. An example would be a person being able to detect the sound of different voices coming from his peers.
The result of a sound is a sound wave. They are composed of compression and rarefaction of air molecules. The strength of a sound wave varies it's loudness. The length of a sound wave is called a frequency, the number of cycles in a wave per given unit of time. A wave's frequency determines it's pitch, the perceived "highness" or "lowness" of a sound. The amplitude is the amount of energy in a wave.
Sound waves enter the auditory canal and strike the eardrum,
making it vibrate. The sound waves eventually pass through a relatively small
opening leading to the inner ear. This causes the stirrup to vibrate, setting
the cochlea in motion. The movement stimulates the cells to send information
along the auditory nerve to the brain.
Middle and Inner Ear
The middle ear transmits the eardrum's vibrations through a
piston made of three tiny bones, to a snail shaped tube in the inner ear called
a cochlea .
Hearing Loss
Conduction Hearing Loss: Hearing loss caused by damage to
the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea.
Sensorineural Hearing Loss: Hearing loss caused by damage to
the chochlea’s receptor cells or to the auditory nerve, also called nerve
deafness.
People tend to suffer hearing higher frequencies as they get
older
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