Learning How We Listen and How a Hearing Center Can Help

A hearing center is intensely interested in running tests that help determine if an individual's sense of hearing is up to standards. But that begs the larger questions—how do sounds translate into what we actually hear? It is a concept many of us hardly think about. A sense we are born with, many of us take our ability to listen completely for granted. But when you begin to lose that sense, you may find yourself more interested in the mechanics of what is happening, how certain devices and treatments can help improve function, and why auditory loss is often permanent. As an entry point into understanding these concepts, here is an overview of what happens in our ears when we hear a sound.

Sound is based around the concept of vibrations. Everyone who learned of Thomas Edison's work with the phonograph knows that, after being struck deaf by an injury, he used record grooves and vibrations to determine that his invention was working. In a normally functioning human ear, vibrations bounce off the solid and amorphous objects in our environment and create sound waves. These waves vibrate at various speeds and heights, the pair of which are referred to as frequency and amplitude in technical terms. The speed of those vibrations determines how high the sound is when we hear it, also known as pitch. And it is the height of those waves that determines how loud it is.

When sound waves reach the ear, they are transformed into nerve impulses, which our brains then interpret as "sound", as we know it. When there are impairments, the modifications in the ear that make this transformation happen are degraded, meaning we get a muffled sound or, in some extreme cases, no sound at all. This is what impairment and deafness essentially is. The ear stops doing the job required of it, or starts doing it in a much less efficient manner. While most people think of impairment as turning everything softer, it can actually affect pitch as well as volume.

The eardrum is the main impetus of interpreting vibrations in the ear. Sound waves bounce off the drum and cause it to vibrate. This vibration creates a magnification effect before sending the sound on into the inner ear. There, the cochlea, which is the primary sensory organ when it comes to sound, which will take the sound and move it along to the brain. When damage occurs to the eardrum, the cochlea, the tiny hairs in the inner ear, or any of the pathways that interpret sound, the ability to hear can be diminished. A hearing center can provide devices that can restore some of the lost amplification.