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The ear is our organ of hearing and balance. Only vertebrates, or animals with backbones, have ears. We discuss the structure and function of our ears and the sense of sound.
Listen closely! |
Articles:
A Brain Map of Auditory Space
submitted by Dr. Gary Farr 6/13/2002
At Caltech in the mid-1970s, Masakazu ("Mark") Konishi began studying the auditory system of barn owls in an effort to resolve a seemingly simple question: Why do we have two ears?
All About the Ears
submitted by Dr. Gary Farr 6/13/2002
The ear is our organ of hearing and balance. Only vertebrates, or animals with backbones, have ears. We discuss the structure and function of our ears.
Bat Sounds and Human Speech
submitted by Dr. Gary Farr 6/13/2002
Perhaps the finest achievement in sound processing is the ability to understand speech. Since this is a uniquely human trait, it would seem difficult to study in animals. Yet a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis believes it can be examined—by working with bats.
On the Trail of Deafness Genes
submitted by Dr. Gary Farr 6/13/2002
Being able to hear speech is so taken for granted—"Is it possible for a hearing person to comprehend the enormity of its absence in someone else?" asks Hannah Merker in her poignant book Listening. "The silence around me is invisible...."
The Goal of Our Ears: Extreme Sensitivity and Speed
submitted by Dr. Gary Farr 6/13/2002
Because of the hair cell bundles' uncanny resemblance to little antennae and their location in the inner ear, the cells had long been suspected of playing an important role in hearing. This view was bolstered by clinical evidence that the majority of hearing impairments—which affect some 30 million Americans—involve damage to hair cells.
The Quivering Bundles That Let Us Hear: Signals From a Hair Cell
submitted by Dr. Gary Farr 6/13/2002
An unusual dance recital was videotaped in David Corey's lab at Massachusetts General Hospital recently. The star of the performance, magnified many times under a high-powered microscope, was a sound-receptor cell from the ear of a bullfrog, called a hair cell because of the distinctive tuft of fine bristles sprouting from its top.
The Value of Having Two Ears
submitted by Dr. Gary Farr 6/13/2002
As a rapid stream of impulses arrives from the hair cells in the ear, the auditory system filters out a few simple, discrete aspects of complex sounds. Information about how high or low-pitched a sound is, how loud it is, and how often it is heard is then channeled along separate nerve pathways to higher-order processing centers in the brain, where millions of auditory neurons can compute the raw data into a recognizable sound pattern.
Tip Links Pull Up the Gates of Ion Channels
submitted by Dr. Gary Farr 6/13/2002
Unlike other types of sensory receptor cells, hair cells do not rely on a cascade of chemical reactions to generate a signal. Photoreceptor cells in the eye, for instance, require a series of intricate interactions with a G protein and a second messenger before their ion channels close, sending a signal to the brain.
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