The Senses (Journal)
Audition
A busy street. A jet in the sky. A child crying. These are just some of the millions of sounds that you encounter on a daily basis. But, how do these sounds go from one object to another? How do our ears work? How do we perceive sound and do we perceive sound differently than others?
Even though we cannot see the inside of our ears to find out what is going on, we do know that hearing is triggered by certain physical stimuli. Pressure waves are one thing that alert our ears to hear. Pressure waves have only three characteristics. Amplitude, complexity and frequency. We process sounds through their timbre, pitch and how loud the sound is. The tiny hairs inside our ears, called cilia, move with the sound that is happening outside and stimulate a special nerve in your brain called the auditory nerve.
Your ears are two of the most complex parts of your body. They have three portions, and only one that you can actually see. The soft skin and cartilage that you can touch, and even pierce for earrings, is called the auricle and pinna. This is the external ear. Once we explore the middle ear, we find out that the main purpose of it is to change the sound wave from the sound happening outside into a vibration. The …show more content…
The cochlea is responsible for you being able to hear even the tiniest of sounds. The tubes inside your inner ear are called semi-circular canals are sometimes called the labyrinth because they can be very complex. The semi-circular canals are responsible for your balance. The cochlea connects to the semicircular canal through the vestibule. The vestibule contains the saccule and the utricle and these are responsible for keeping you balanced. The vestibule leads to a round window and the eighth cranial nerve. The eighth cranial nerve is made of the vestibular nerve which helps with balance and the cochlear nerve which assists with