How Hearing Works

Your ears are extraordinary organs. They pick up all the

sounds around you and then translate this information into
a form your brain can understand. One of the most
remarkable things about this process is that it is completely
mechanical. Your sense of smell, taste and vision all
involve chemical reactions, but your hearing system is
based solely on physical movement.

In this article, we'll look at the mechanical systems that

make hearing possible. We'll trace the path of a sound,
from its original source all the way to your brain, to see Ear diagram courtesy NASA
how all the parts of the ear work together. When you Your ear is a delicate and
understand everything they do, it's clear that your ears are detailed sensory organ.
one of the most incredible parts of your body! See more human senses
pictures.
To understand how your ears hear sound, you first need to
understand just what sound is.

An object produces sound when it vibrates in matter. This could be a solid, such as
earth; a liquid, such as water; or a gas, such as air. Most of the time, we hear sounds
traveling through the air in our atmosphere.

When something vibrates in the atmosphere, it moves the air particles around it. Those
air particles in turn move the air particles around them, carrying the pulse of the
vibration through the air.

To see how this works, let's look at a simple vibrating object: a bell. When you hit a bell,
the metal vibrates -- flexes in and out. When it flexes out on one side, it pushes on the
surrounding air particles on that side. These air particles then collide with the particles in
front of them, which collide with the particles in front of them, and so on. This is
called compression.

When the bell flexes away, it pulls in on the surrounding air particles. This creates a
drop in pressure, which pulls in more surrounding air particles, creating another drop in
pressure, which pulls in particles even farther out. This pressure decrease is
called rarefaction.

In this way, a vibrating object sends a wave of pressure fluctuation through the
atmosphere. We hear different sounds from different vibrating objects because of
variations in the sound wave frequency. A higher wave frequency simply means that
the air pressure fluctuation switches back and forth more quickly. We hear this as a
higher pitch. When there are fewer fluctuations in a period of time, the pitch is lower.
The level of air pressure in each fluctuation, the wave's amplitude, determines how
loud the sound is. In the next section, we'll look at how the ear is able to capture sound
waves.

Catching Sound Waves

We saw in the last section that sound travels through the air as vibrations in air
pressure. To hear sound, your ear has to do three basic things:

 Direct the sound waves into the hearing part of the ear

 Sense the fluctuations in air pressure

 Translate these fluctuations into an electrical signal that your brain can
understand

The pinna, the outer part of the ear, serves to "catch" the sound waves. Your outer ear
is pointed forward and it has a number of curves. This structure helps you determine the
direction of a sound. If a sound is coming from behind you or above you, it will bounce
off the pinna in a different way than if it is coming from in front of you or below you. This
sound reflection alters the pattern of the sound wave. Your brain recognizes distinctive
patterns and determines whether the sound is in front of you, behind you, above you or
below you.

Your brain determines the horizontal position of a sound by comparing the information
coming from your two ears. If the sound is to your left, it will arrive at your left ear a little
bit sooner than it arrives at your right ear. It will also be a little bit louder in your left ear
than your right ear.

Bodily Sensations

The nervous system determines the countless sensations we feel all over our bodies
every day. How does this work? What causes your leg to feel tingly when it falls asleep?
How do you know when you're about to sneeze? This activity from Discovery Channel
explains how sensations are produced in the body.

Since the pinnae face forward, you can hear sounds in front of you better than you can
hear sounds behind you. Many mammals, such as dogs, have large, movable pinnae
that let them focus on sounds from a particular direction. Human pinnae are not so
adept at focusing on sound. They lay fairly flat against the head and don't have the
necessary muscles for significant movement. But you can easily supplement your
natural pinnae by cupping your hands behind your ears. By doing this, you create a
larger surface area that can capture sound waves better. In the next section, we'll see
what happens as a sound wave travels down the ear canal and interacts with the
eardrum.

The Eardrum

Once the sound waves travel into the ear canal, they vibrate the tympanic membrane,
commonly called the eardrum. The eardrum is a thin, cone-shaped piece of skin, about
10 millimeters (0.4 inches) wide. It is positioned between the ear canal and the middle
ear. The middle ear is connected to the throat via the Eustachian tube. Since air from
the atmosphere flows in from your outer ear as well as your mouth, the air pressure on
both sides of the eardrum remains equal. This pressure balance lets your eardrum
move freely back and forth

The eardrum is rigid, and very sensitive. Even the slightest air-pressure fluctuations will
move it back and forth. It is attached to the tensor tympani muscle, which constantly
pulls it inward. This keeps the entire membrane taut so it will vibrate no matter which
part of it is hit by a sound wave.
 Ear illustration courtesy NIDCD
Normal ear anatomy

This tiny flap of skin acts just like the diaphragm in a microphone. The compressions
and rarefactions of sound waves push the drum back and forth. Higher-pitch sound
waves move the drum more rapidly, and louder sound moves the drum a greater
distance.

The eardrum can also serve to protect the inner ear from prolonged exposure to loud,
low-pitch noises. When the brain receives a signal that indicates this sort of noise, a
reflex occurs at the eardrum. The tensor tympani muscle and the stapedius
muscle suddenly contract. This pulls the eardrum and the connected bones in two
different directions, so the drum becomes more rigid. When this happens, the ear does
not pick up as much noise at the low end of the audible spectrum, so the loud noise is
dampened.

In addition to protecting the ear, this reflex helps you concentrate your hearing. It masks
loud, low-pitch background noise so you can focus on higher-pitch sounds. Among
other things, this helps you carry on a conversation when you're in a very noisy
environment, like a rock concert. The reflex also kicks in whenever you start talking --
otherwise, the sound of your own voice would drown out a lot of the other sounds
around you.
The eardrum is the entire sensory element in your ear. As we'll see in the coming
sections, the rest of the ear serves only to pass along the information gathered at the
eardrum.

Amplifying Sound

We saw in the last section that the compressions and rarefactions in sound waves move
your eardrum back and forth. For the most part, these changes in air pressure are
extremely small. They don't apply much force on the eardrum, but the eardrum is so
sensitive that this minimal force moves it a good distance.

As we'll see in the next section, the cochlea in the inner ear conducts sound through a
fluid, instead of through air. This fluid has a much higher inertia than air -- that is, it is
harder to move (think of pushing air versus pushing water). The small force felt at the
eardrum is not strong enough to move this fluid. Before the sound passes on to the
inner ear, the total pressure (force per unit of area) must be amplified.

This is the job of the ossicles, a group of tiny bones in the middle ear. The ossicles are
actually the smallest bones in your body. They include:

 The malleus, commonly called the hammer

 The incus, commonly called the anvil

 The stapes, commonly called the stirrup

Sound waves vibrate the eardrum, which moves the malleus, incus
and stapes.
The malleus is connected to the center of the eardrum, on the inner side. When the
eardrum vibrates, it moves the malleus from side to side like a lever. The other end of
the malleus is connected to the incus, which is attached to the stapes. The other end of
the stapes -- its faceplate -- rests against the cochlea, through the oval window.

When air-pressure compression pushes in on the eardrum, the ossicles move so that
the faceplate of the stapes pushes in on the cochlear fluid. When air-pressure
rarefaction pulls out on the eardrum, the ossicles move so that the faceplate of the
stapes pulls in on the fluid. Essentially, the stapes acts as a piston, creating waves in
the inner-ear fluid to represent the air-pressure fluctuations of the sound wave.

The ossicles amplify the force from the eardrum in two ways. The main amplification
comes from the size difference between the eardrum and the stirrup. The eardrum has
a surface area of approximately 55 square millimeters, while the faceplate of the stapes
has a surface area of about 3.2 square millimeters. Sound waves apply force to every
square inch of the eardrum, and the eardrum transfers all this energy to the stapes.
When you concentrate this energy over a smaller surface area, the pressure (force per
unit of volume) is much greater. To learn more about this hydraulic multiplication,
check out How Hydraulic Machines Work.

The configuration of ossicles provides additional amplification. The malleus is longer

than the incus, forming a basic lever between the eardrum and the stapes. The malleus
moves a greater distance, and the incus moves with greater force (energy = force x
distance).

This amplification system is extremely effective. The pressure applied to the cochlear
fluid is about 22 times the pressure felt at the eardrum. This pressure amplification is
enough to pass the sound information on to the inner ear, where it is translated into
nerve impulses the brain can understand.

Fluid Wave

The cochlea is by far the most complex part of the ear. Its job is to take the physical
vibrations caused by the sound wave and translate them into electrical information the
brain can recognize as distinct sound.

The cochlea structure consists of three adjacent tubes separated from each other by
sensitive membranes. In reality, these tubes are coiled in the shape of a snail shell, but
it's easier to understand what's going on if you imagine them stretched out. It's also
clearer if we treat two of the tubes, the scala vestibuli and the scala media, as one
chamber. The membrane between these tubes is so thin that sound waves travel as if
the tubes weren't separated at all.
 The piston action of the stapes moves the fluid in the cochlea. This
causes a vibration wave to travel down the basilar membrane.

The stapes moves back and forth, creating pressure waves in the entire cochlea. The
round window membrane separating the cochlea from the middle ear gives the fluid
somewhere to go. It moves out when the stapes pushes in and moves in when the
stapes pulls out.

The middle membrane, the basilar membrane, is a rigid surface that extends across
the length of the cochlea. When the stapes moves in and out, it pushes and pulls on the
part of the basilar membrane just below the oval window. This force starts a wave
moving along the surface of the membrane. The wave travels something like ripples
along the surface of a pond, moving from the oval window down to the other end of the
cochlea.

The basilar membrane has a peculiar structure. It's made of 20,000 to 30,000 reed-like
fibers that extend across the width of the cochlea. Near the oval window, the fibers are
short and stiff. As you move toward the other end of the tubes, the fibers get longer and
more limber.

This gives the fibers different resonant frequencies. A specific wave frequency will
resonate perfectly with the fibers at a certain point, causing them to vibrate rapidly. This
is the same principle that makes tuning forks and kazoos work -- a specific pitch will
start a tuning fork ringing, and humming in a certain way will cause a kazoo reed to
vibrate.

As the wave moves along most of the membrane, it can't release much energy -- the
membrane is too tense. But when the wave reaches the fibers with the same resonant
frequency, the wave's energy is suddenly released. Because of the increasing length
and decreasing rigidity of the fibers, higher-frequency waves vibrate the fibers closer to
the oval window, and lower frequency waves vibrate the fibers at the other end of the
membrane. In the next section, we'll look at how tiny hairs help us hear sound.

Hair Cells

In the last section, we saw that higher pitches vibrate the basilar membrane most
intensely near the oval window, and lower pitches vibrate the basilar membrane most
intensely at a point farther down the cochlea. But how does the brain know where these
vibrations occur?

This is the organ of corti's job. The organ of corti is a structure containing thousands of
tiny hair cells. It lies on the surface of the basilar membrane and extends across the
length of the cochlea.

Until a wave reaches the fibers with a resonant frequency, it doesn't move the basilar
membrane a whole lot. But when the wave finally does reach the resonant point, the
membrane suddenly releases a burst of energy in that area. This energy is strong
enough to move the organ of corti hair cells at that point.

When these hair cells are moved, they send an electrical impulse through the cochlear
nerve. The cochlear nerve sends these impulses on to the cerebral cortex, where the
brain interprets them. The brain determines the pitch of the sound based on the position
of the cells sending electrical impulses. Louder sounds release more energy at the
resonant point along the membrane and so move a greater number of hair cells in that
area. The brain knows a sound is louder because more hair cells are activated in an
area.

The cochlea only sends raw data -- complex patterns of electrical impulses. The brain is
like a central computer, taking this input and making some sense of it all. This is an
extraordinarily complex operation, and scientists are still a long way from understanding
everything about it.

In fact, hearing in general is still very mysterious to us. The basic concepts at work in
human and animal ears are fairly simple, but the specific structures are extremely
complex. Scientists are making rapid advancements, however, and they discover new
hearing elements every year. It's astonishing how much is involved in the hearing
process, and it's even more amazing that all these processes take place in such a small
area of the body.

How Fats Work

Between the food commercials you see on TV every day and the many nutrition
bulletins and reports you hear about on the news every night, you get a huge amount of
information about the fats that you eat. For example, you have probably heard of the
following terms:

 Saturated fat

 Unsaturated fat

 Polyunsaturated fat

 Mono-unsaturated fat

 Fatty acids

 Essential fatty acids

 Trans fatty acids

 Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids

  Partially hydrogenated fat

Have you ever wondered what it all means, or why it matters? Why can't we just eat,
drink and be merry? In this article, you'll find out exactly what these terms mean and
how the various forms of fat you find in foods affect your body. But first, let's find out
what we're talking about in practical terms.

We see pure fats in three places at the grocery store:

 In the vegetable oil aisle you see oils created from different seeds and nuts.
There is corn oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, canola oil, olive oil... All seeds and nuts
contain some amount of oil, because oil is a very good way to store energy. By
the way, the only difference between oil and fat is whether or not it is a solid at
room temperature.

 In the meat aisle, you can look at different cuts of meat and see them outlined by
a layer of white, solid fat created by the animal to store energy.

 In the dairy aisle you see butter and margarine -- fat made from cream or
vegetable oils, respectively.

The rest of the grocery store is, of course, filled with fats and oils, although they are less
obvious. Potato chips and french fries are cooked in oil, cookies and cakes contain fats
and oils, and so on. This is how we come to eat the fat we need every day. And we
do need fat -- as you will learn in this article, there are certain fats that we must have to
survive.

So what are these fats and oils really made of? Well, if you really want to understand fat
you need to study a little bit of chemistry. To talk about fat, we need to start by talking
about fatty acids.

CORN OIL

With some grains and nuts it is very easy to see where the oil comes from. For
example, if you squeeze a sesame seed or a sunflower seed between two sheets of
paper, you can see the oil. Corn isn't quite that oily, but it does contain oil. A kernel of
corn has an outer husk surrounding a white or yellow starchy substance. At the core of
the starchy substance and toward the pointy end of the kernel is the germ. The germ
contains a small amount of oil. If you cut a popcorn kernel in half, you can see the husk,
starch and germ. If you cut out the tiny piece of germ and squeeze the germ on a piece
of paper, you will see the oil!
What is a Fatty Acid?

A fatty acid is a long hydrocarbon chain capped by a carboxyl group(COOH). There

are many common fatty acids that you hear about, four of which are shown below along
with acetic acid for comparison:

The COOH cap is what makes these molecules acids. You are probably familiar with
acetic acid because this is the acid found in vinegar. You can see that the fatty acids
are like acetic acid, but they have much longer carbon chains.
To make a normal fat, you take three fatty acids and bond them together with glycerol to
form a triglyceride, like this:

Since this particular triglyceride happens to contain three molecules of stearic acid, it is
also known as tristearin. This diagram shows one fat molecule. When you eat fat, you
are eating collections of molecules like these. The choice of the fatty acids in the fat
controls many different things about the fat, including how it looks, whether it is a solid
or a liquid at room temperature and how healthy it is for your body. Many of these
characteristics have to do with whether a fat is "saturated" or "unsaturated."

Saturated vs. Unsaturated

If you look at palmitic acid and stearic acid chains, you can see that the carbon chains
are completely and evenly filled with hydrogen atoms.
In other words, the chains aresaturated with hydrogen. Fats (triglycerides) that contain
palmitic acid and stearic acid are therefore known as saturated fats. Fats made up of
saturated fatty acids are solid at room temperature. You can also see that oleic acid is
not saturated. Two of the carbons are connected by a double bond, and two of the
hydrogens are missing. This fatty acid is unsaturated. Fats that have a lot of oleic acid
in them are liquid at room temperature, and are therefore known to us as oils.

Oleic acid, because it contains one double bond, is also referred to asmono-
unsaturated. Fatty acids that have multiple double bonds, like linoleic acid in the first
figure, are called polyunsaturated. Polyunsaturated fats are also liquid at room
temperature.

If you have a bottle of corn oil, what you have is a bottle of polyunsaturated oil with a
high concentration of linoleic acid. Because it is polyunsaturated, it is liquid at room
temperature. If you would like to solidify it and turn it into margarine, what you do
is hydrogenate it. That is, you saturate it with hydrogen by breaking the carbon double
bonds and attaching hydrogen. To do this, you heat the oil and add pressurized
hydrogen gas and a nickel catalyst. In this way, you create "partially hydrogenated
vegetable oil." PHVO is the main ingredient in things like vegetable shortening and
margarine.

Fat and Health

Most of the nutrition science you hear about right now points to mono-unsaturated fats
as the good fats. Olive oil and canola oil are both mono-unsaturated. Mono-
unsaturated fats are thought to lower cholesterol.

In general, the fats to steer clear of are the saturated fats. Saturated fats are bad
because they clog your arteries. Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (which are
artificially saturated fats) are now considered totally evil, both because of the saturation
and a side-effect of hydrogenation called trans fatty acids.

Fatty acids that have double bonds come in two forms: trans and cis. "Trans" and "cis"
refer to the direction of folding that occurs at the carbon double bonds in unsaturated
fatty acids. Cis fatty acids are the normal, natural directions for the folds. A trans fatty
acid is chemically identical to the cis form, but folds in an unnatural direction. The trans
fatty acids are created by heat (as in deep frying) and by hydrogenation.

It turns out that in the body, the enzymes that deal with fat are unable to deal with the
trans fatty acids (see How Cells Work for details on enzymes). Therefore, the enzymes
get tied up trying to work on the trans fatty acids, and this can lead to problems with the
processing of essential fatty acids.
Essential fatty acids are not bad for you the way trans fatty acids are. They're actually
essential to good health.

Essential Fatty Acids

The most common fatty acids are found in animal fats and include:

 Palmitic acid

 Stearic acid

 Oleic acid

Your body is able to create these fats whenever it has a caloric surplus. It can create
them from straight sugar if there are enough sugar calories coming in (see How Food
Works for a discussion of carbohydrates and sugar).

It turns out that there is another class of fatty acids called essential fatty acids that
your body cannot manufacture. These fatty acids include:

 Linoleic acid (LA) (omega-6)

 Arachidonic acid (AA) (omega-6)

 Gamma linolenic acid (GLA) (omega-6)

 Dihomogamma linolenic acid (DGLA) (omega-6)

 Alpha linolenic acid (LNA) (omega-3)

 Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) (omega-3)

 Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) (omega-3)

Because your body cannot manufacture them, they must come in from the food you eat.

Essential fatty acids fall into two groups: omega-3 and omega-6. The 3 and 6 refer to
the first carbon double bond position on the fatty acid chain. All essential fatty acids are
polyunsaturated, so the 3 and the 6 mean that the first double bond is either 3 or 6
carbons in from the end.

Omega-6 fatty acids are everywhere: corn oil, sunflower oil and soybean oil all contain
them. Omega-3 fatty acids are harder to find. Things like flax seeds, pumpkin seeds and
walnuts are high in omega-3 fatty acids, as are salmon, trout and tuna. Current thinking
is that these two fats need to be balanced in the diet at a ratio like 1-to-1 or 2-to-1,
rather than the normal 20-to-1 ratio seen in most Western diets. About the only way to
do that is to supplement your diet with omega-3 vegetable oils or to start eating fish in a
big way (meaning two or three times a week).

Summarizing all of this information, the current scientific thinking on fat consumption
goes something like this:

 Limit your fat intake to about 30 percent of the total calories you consume. Do
not try to cut fat intake altogether, because you do need the essential fatty acids.
A gram of fat has nine calories, meaning that if you consume 2,000 calories in a
day your total fat intake should hover around (2000 * 30 percent / 9
calories/gram) 67 grams of fat.

 When consuming fat, try to focus on mono-unsaturated fats like olive oil and
canola oil, or on essential fatty acids.

 When consuming essential fatty acids, try to balance your intake of omega-6
and omega-3 fatty acids. Do that by consuming tuna/salmon/trout or omega-3
oils like flax seed oil.