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What Is Sound?
The simplest kind of sounds: sine (sinusoidal) waves, or pure tone.
Sine waves are not common in everyday sounds because not many vibrations in
the world are so pure (exception is the tuning fork).
Most sounds in the world are complex sounds.
For example: Human voices, bird songs, music.
All sound waves can be described as some combination of sine waves.
A: Waveform on left can be described in a spectrum (on right) as an amplitude (height of bar)
and a frequency (location of bar (about 1000 Hz)).
B: Smaller amplitude and higher frequency sound described by a shorter bar at a higher
frequency.
A and B: Complex sound can be described by a combination of two sine waves, A and B.
Combining these sine waves will reproduce the original sound.
As well see later, the inner ear conducts a form of Fourier analysis of sound waves.
Figure 9.8 Harmonic sounds with the same fundamental frequency can sound different
The middle ear relays sound information from the outer ear to the inner ear.
Ossicles: The smallest bones in the body.
Malleus (also called the hammer): Receives vibrations from the
tympanic membrane.
Incus (anvil): The middle ossicle connects malleus to the stapes.
Stapes (stirrup): Connected to the incus on one end and the oval
window of the cochlea on the other.
Amplification of vibrational energy provided by the
ossicles is essential to the ability to hear faint sounds.
Ossicles have hinged joints that work like levers
to amplify sounds energy.
Stapes has a smaller surface than the eardrum,
so sound energy is concentrated (easy to
squash a grape with a sheet of plywood).
Inner ear consists of fluid-filled chambers.
Takes more energy to move liquid than air.
http://www.tutis.ca/Senses/L9Auditory/L9Auditory.swf
Back-and-forth movement of the stapes moves the oval window which moves
the fluid inside the cochlea.
Back-and-forth movement of the stapes moves the oval window which moves
the fluid inside the cochlea.
Fluid flowing past the basilar membrane causes it to move up and down like
a board floating on a lake after a speedboat goes by.
Detecting loudness: More intense sound waves trigger bigger waves of fluid in
the cochlea and more intense movements of the basilar membrane.
This results in greater shearing action of the hair cells.
The K+ ions cause depolarization which allows Ca2+ to enter the base of the hair
cell, causing release of neurotransmitter into the synapse between the hair cell
and an afferent auditory neuron.
Thus, when a hair cell is displaced by movement of the basilar membrane it
releases more transmitter.
There are four kinds of neural connections between the brain and hair cells.
IHC afferents convey action
potentials that provide sound
perception to the brain.
IHC efferents lead from the
brain to the IHCscontrol
responsiveness.
Primary auditory cortex has tonotopic organization that matches the frequency
profile of the basilar membrane.
Cues for Binaural Hearing: two kinds of binaural cues locate a sound source.
1. Intensity differencesdifferences in loudness
at the two ears.
2. Latency differencesdifferences
between the two ears in the time of arrival
of sounds.
Onset disparitydifference in hearing at
the beginning of a sound.
Ongoing phase disparitycontinuous
difference between ears in arrival of parts
of a sound wave.
Lateral Superior Olive (LSO) and Medial Nucleus of the Trapezoid Body (MNTB)
encode sound localization through interaural intensity differencesworks best for high
frequency sounds.
Medial superior olive (MSO) has cells that are coincidence detectors. They receive coincident innervation
from the right and left cochlear nuclei.
Cells within the MSO are located at different distances from the respective cochlear nuclei.
Length of the axonal connections determine which MSO cell receives coincident activation by action
potential.
Conduction deafness
disorders of the outer or
middle ear that prevent
sounds from reaching the
cochlea
http://www.tutis.ca/Senses/L9Auditory/L9Auditory.swf
Residents of quiet Easter Island suffered less hearing loss at all frequencies than
their peers who lived off the island.
Hearing loss (especially high frequencies) is correlated with age.