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| Anatomy of our Ear |
Coping with hearing loss begins with understanding how hearing works.
To understand hearing loss, the best place to start is inside the ear. It is the place where many complex and delicate functions combine to create what we call hearing.
Your ear is an amazing organ that can perceive sounds from barely audible to very loud at frequencies or pitcheds of 20 to 20,000 Hz. It can pinpoint the direction of a sound source to an amazing degree of accuracy.
Outer Ear: Consists of the pinna (auricle) and the ear canal (external auditory canal). External structure that collects sound. Its funnel shape plays an important role in directing the sound into the ear and helps locate the source of the sound.
External Auditory Canal: Part of the outer ear, a one-inch long, one-quarter inch diameter tube that ends at the eardrum. Its shape helps to boost speech frequencies.>
Eardrum or Tympanic Membrane: A membrane about 1/3 of an inch in diameter that stretches across the inner end of the external ear canal. It vibrates in response to sound waves and forms the boundary between the outer ear and middle ear.
Middle Ear: The location of the auditory ossicles, which are 3 small bones that convey sound impulses to the oval window. They are the hammer (malleus), anvil (incus), and stirrup (stapes).
Inner Ear: Consists of the cochlea and the semicircular canals.
Cochlea: Converts sound waves to nerve impulses through movement of thousands of tiny hair cells.
Acoustic Hair Cells: Located inside the cochlea, these convert mechanical sound waves into electrical signals.
Auditory Nerve: Transmits the electrical signals from the acoustic hair cells from the inner ear to the brain.
Brain: Processes the electrical signals from the auditory nerve that we interpret to be "sound."
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