Psychoacoustics - Parts and Functions of the Ear

We all love music of some sort. There is something to be said about it. Music moves us, captures our minds, and soothes our soul. While many claim that music can be felt from a vibration perspective, the majority of us will agree that we need our ears to enjoy the sweet benefits that music can bring. As an audio engineer, it's important to understand why sound affects a person and in order to fully understand the effects music and sound have on a person, we need to start with the basics. That being said, I'm going to explain the function of the ear and how it relates to the music we hear.

Hearing is a sense that fortunately most of us have, but unfortunately one that we often take for granted. Research has shown that hearing is actually the first sense to develop in the womb and its impact on our everyday lives is more than we realize. Not only can sound impact us psychologically, but it can affect our heart rate, blood circulation, body temperature, etc.

Hearing is such an important and delicate sense, it is good to know what allows us to hear and why we hear things the way we do. Think of the way we hear as an assembly line working to communicate and connect the outside world to our brain. Here are the 3 basic parts of the ear to help you understand:

The Outer Ear

The outer ear consists of the pinna and the ear canal. The pinna is what we think of when we think of the ear. It's the skin outside of the head and is responsible for capturing ambient sounds. This allows us to locate a specific sound and distinguish its source. The ear canal receives the sound from the pinna and directs the sound into the middle ear.

The Middle Ear

The sound travels from the ear canal into the eardrum. The eardrum amplifies the sound and takes it to the next parts in line, the ossicles. The ossicles consist of three tiny bones, the malleus, incus, and stapes. These bones are the "workers" and move the sound to the inner ear.

The Inner Ear

It is in the inner ear where the actual "hearing" part takes place inside the cochlea. The cochlea is a canal that houses little hair-like receptors called cilia. It's the cilia that respond to the frequency of the sound and move accordingly to allow you to hear the actual sound. Remember to be smart and not listen to loud music or high frequencies for an extended period of time. The cilia move up and down with the sound like strands of grass in the wind and if the sound is too overbearing, the cilia will actually stay bent and cause the person to hear a ringing sound constantly. This condition is referred as tinnitus and there is no easy cure.

Well there you go. In this article we covered the basic parts of the ear and what role each specific part has in ensuring that you enjoy that favorite song of yours.