27
votes
Accepted
Why is loud music much louder after pausing and resuming it?
Hearing is capable of sensory adaptation such that prolonged constant stimulus is perceived as less intense. In hearing, the adaptation to loud sounds is called acoustic reflex and is mediated by two ...
- 1,923
19
votes
Accepted
If tinnitus is, in many cases, caused by damaged ear hair cells, couldn't it be solved by a mini cochlear implant that sends a constant signal?
Short answer
You are right, with a few caveats.
Background
Most tinnitus cases are caused by sensorineural hearing loss, as you rightfully indicate, namely due to a loss of hair cells in the cochlea. ...
- 52.3k
14
votes
Can mosquitoes be attracted by our voice?
Mosquitoes can hear the human voice. If they use human sound to hone in on us as a source of a blood feed is not known at this time, however research into this has just begun. This is especially ...
- 24.7k
12
votes
Accepted
How does pressure travel through the cochlea exactly?
Short answer
The pressure wave through the scala vestibuli drives the basilar membrane response (BM). Your option (1) is correct, (2) is not. The pressure not really permeates or penetrates Reissner's ...
- 52.3k
9
votes
Accepted
Why is the human ear most sensitive to 4000 Hz tones?
The frequency-selectivity of loudness perception was first shown in the 1930s, when Fletcher and Munson published a set of curves showing the ear's sensitivity to loudness compared to frequency. These ...
- 52.3k
9
votes
Accepted
Is brain plasticity such that we can train ourself to see with our ears?
Short answer
Yes, we can see with our ears.
Background
Bach-y-Rita famously stated "We see with our brains, not our eyes". Bach-y-Rita worked for decades on sensory substitution. Sensory substitution ...
- 52.3k
9
votes
Can mosquitoes be attracted by our voice?
Mosquitos can certainly hear in the range of normal human speech. They are sensitive to the range of around 150-500Hz, and typical human speech is between 100-300Hz depending on your age and sex (DOI: ...
- 379
7
votes
Accepted
Are there any animals that are unable to hear the human voice?
Are there (apart from those with no sense of hearing at all) any
animals that are unable to hear human voices at all?
I don't know of any examples off the top of my head, but let's think about this ...
- 6,192
6
votes
Accepted
Why do oviparous animals not have ears?
Interesting hypothesis! - all of those animals you mentioned in fact do have ears, they just don't have external pinnae. You are probably thinking of these external structures when you are thinking of ...
- 44k
6
votes
How does waking up from an alarm clock work?
The brain does not "shut down" during sleep. While not everything about sleeping is understood, we do know that certain areas in the brain remain active during sleep. There is a good overview on sleep ...
- 2,258
6
votes
Accepted
What causes the tonotopic organization of the inner ear?
The frequency tuning in the cochlea is due to a number of factors.
The primary factors of cochlear frequency tuning are generally ascribed to the passive physical characteristics of the basilar ...
- 52.3k
6
votes
Why are mammals the only animals with pinnae / outer ears?
Short answer Mammalian hearing is unique and amazing.
The mammalian ear is unique and highly sensitive with a built in amplification system that means even minute changes in sound can be detected. ...
- 14.3k
6
votes
Do schooling fish make sounds that predators could detect?
Yes, fish make sounds that predators can use:
Like us, fish produce sound both unintentionally and intentionally. Unintentional sounds from fish come all the time, resulting from hydrodynamic ...
- 24.7k
6
votes
Accepted
Where in the cochlea are frequencies below 200 Hz detected?
The answer is two fold, each related to the two ways pitch is encoded in the inner ear. These two mechanisms are place coding and rate coding.
Regarding place-pitch; given that there are hair cells ...
- 52.3k
5
votes
Accepted
How far does eardrum move?
Tympanic displacement measurement (TMD) is a well studied field using hi-tech tools (i.e. stroboscopic holography), and complex units:
Vm = volume displacement in nl nanoLiters.
μm/pa (UDTF) = Linear ...
- 10.3k
5
votes
Accepted
What causes "ear rumbling"?
I'm able to create rumbling in my ears at will. Unlike the poster of the video, I don't need to yawn to do so; I can do it without my face appearing to move. I actually discovered this alongside ...
- 787
4
votes
Short dated spontaneous ringing in ear
Spontaneous ringing is caused by When the outer hair cells put energy back into the vibration, which is known as positive feedback. The process is meant to amplify very quiet sounds more so than loud ...
- 2,603
4
votes
Do our ears or brains gradually adapt to noise pollution?
Very quickly and totally from the top of my head: Traffic noise is in many cases dominated by low frequencies, with the whole spectrum somewhat similar to a distorted 1/f function, with a few tonal ...
- 41
4
votes
Accepted
Why don't we hear ultrasonic sounds as aliased versions of the original signals?
Short answer
The cochlea is a tonotopic map with certain physically determined boundaries that determine the range of frequencies perceived. Ultrasonic soundwaves simply do not have a correlate on ...
- 52.3k
4
votes
What is the purpose of the incus?
The incus is there in humans because it is there in our mammalian ancestors, and it is there in our ancestors because the mammalian three-bone ossicle system was inherited from early amniotes.
The ...
- 12.2k
4
votes
How much does hearing deteriorate with age?
Hearing sensitivity deteriorates with age, which is called age-related hearing loss, or presbyacusis. Presbyacusis is characterized by elevated hearing thresholds. Especially the high frequencies are ...
- 52.3k
4
votes
Accepted
What happens when I pop my ears?
The outer ear canal ends at the eardrum, and beyond that is the middle ear. The middle ear is normally a closed chamber, but can be connected to the outside world by flexing the jaw or muscles ...
- 9,024
3
votes
Accepted
Ear ossicles a part of Skull?
The justification is simple.
The bones of the ear [ear ossicles] do not articulate with any other bone of the skull hence it is not considered as a part of the skull, similar is the case with the ...
3
votes
What is the purpose of the incus?
Short answer
The incus forms a lever with the malleus, thereby amplifying incoming sound and aiding in the impedance-matching function of the middle ear.
Background
In addition to kmm's excellent ...
- 52.3k
3
votes
In what range do humans generally interpret sound best?
I work on voice recognition too. Yes, very brilliant query about sound perception that I can clarify and not answer completely. Most of the text belongs to DSP SE forum, i.e. Voice rec, MFCC, filter, ...
- 10.3k
3
votes
How we can localize sound vertically (up-down) and front-to-back?
The Wikipedia article is quite good.
In brief, as you state, the wave phase can be used only to localise sounds in the plane of the ears. To have an approximation of the position in the median plane (...
- 1,127
3
votes
Accepted
Can somebody be deaf to voices of some people only?
Although you loose the high frequencies in your hearing with age (20kHz and below), this is highly unlikely. The frequency spectrum of our voice is pretty much limited, which is also shown by the fact ...
- 51.5k
3
votes
Are our ears more sensitive to low or high pitched sounds?
Short answer
Our ears are most sensitive to the mid-frequencies.
Background
There are different ways of assessing sound level. The physical one simply determines the physical sound pressure level (...
- 52.3k
3
votes
What causes the tonotopic organization of the inner ear?
To add to Christiaan's answer, the length of the hair cells also changes along the basilar membrane. They are longer and floppier near the apex. There are many levels of mechanical interaction ...
- 223
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible