Hearing

SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

Hearing

Hearing, or audition, depends on the presence of sound waves, which travel much more slowly than light waves. Sound waves are changes in pressure generated by vibrating molecules. The physical characteristics of sound waves influence the three psychological features of sound: loudness, pitch, and timbre.

·         Loudness depends on the amplitude, or height, of sound waves. The greater the amplitude, the louder the sound perceived. Amplitude is measured in decibels. The absolute threshold of human hearing is defined as 0 decibels. Loudness doubles with every 10-decibel increase in amplitude.

A Whisper to a Scream

The loudness of normal human conversation is about sixty decibels. A whisper is about twenty decibels. A shout right into someone’s ear is about 115 decibels. Being exposed to sounds that are over 120 decibels, even for brief periods, can damage the auditory system.

·         Pitch, though influenced by amplitude, depends most on the frequency of sound waves. Frequency is the number of times per second a sound wave cycles from the highest to the lowest point. The higher the frequency, the higher the pitch. Frequency is measured in hertz, or cycles per second. Frequency also affects loudness, with higher-pitched sounds being perceived as louder. Amplitude and frequency of sound waves interact to produce the experiences of loudness and pitch.

What’s Audible?

Humans can hear sounds that are between 20 and 20,000 hertz.

·         Timbre, or the particular quality of a sound, depends on the complexity of a sound wave. A pure tone has sound waves of only one frequency. Most sound waves are a mixture of different frequencies.

The Structure of the Ear

Knowing the basic structure of the ear is essential to understanding how hearing works. The ear has three basic parts: the outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear.

The visible part of the ear is thepinna, which collects sound waves and passes them along the auditory canal to a membrane called the eardrum. When sound waves hit the eardrum, it vibrates. The eardrum transmits the vibration to three bones, or ossicles, in the middle ear, which are called the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup. The diagram of the ear shows how they got these names: they actually look like a hammer, an anvil, and a stirrup. In response to the vibration, these ossicles move one after another. Their function is to amplify the sound vibrations.

From the ossicles, vibrations move through a membrane called the oval window to the cochlea of the inner ear. The cochlea is a coiled, fluid-filled tunnel.

Inside the cochlea are receptors called cilia or hair cells that are embedded in thebasilar membrane. The basilar membrane runs along the whole length of the coiled cochlea. Vibrations that reach the inner ear cause the fluid in the cochlea to move in waves. These waves in turn make the hair cells move.

The movement triggers impulses in neurons that connect with the hair cells. The axons of these neurons come together to form the auditory nerve, which sends impulses from the ear to the brain. In the brain, the thalamus and the auditory cortex, which is in the temporal lobe of the cerebrum, receive auditory information.

Pitch Perception

Two theories explain how people distinguish the pitch of different sounds: place theory and frequency theory.

Place theory explains how people discriminate high-pitched sounds that have a frequency greater than 5000 Hz. Place theory states that sound waves of different frequencies trigger receptors at different places on the basilar membrane. The brain figures out the pitch of the sound by detecting the position of the hair cells that sent the neural signal.

Frequency theory explains how people discriminate low-pitched sounds that have a frequency below 1000 Hz. According to frequency theory, sound waves of different frequencies make the whole basilar membrane vibrate at different rates and therefore cause neural impulses to be sent at different rates. Pitch is determined by how fast neural signals move along to the brain.

The detection of moderately pitched sounds, with a frequency between 1000 and 5000 Hz, is explained by both place theory and frequency theory. To discriminate among these sounds, the brain uses a code based both on where the neural impulses originated and how quickly neural impulses move.

Locating Sounds

In the same way that people use two eyes to perceive depth, people use two ears to locate the origin of sounds. The left ear receives sound waves coming from the left slightly faster than the right ear does. The signal received by the left ear may also be a little more intense than that received in the right ear, because the signal has to go around the head to enter the right ear.

Locating a sound is difficult if both ears receive a signal of exactly the same intensity at exactly the same time, as when a sound originates from directly in front, directly behind, or directly above. Turning the head or cocking it to one side can help circumvent this difficulty.