Introduction

 

A wide variety of sensory systems have been biologically evolved to allow the detection of environmental stimuli for proper behavioural reactions in animals and human beings.

The incoming signal generally undergoes step-by-step conversion through multiple sequential transformations before we can perceive it. 

In auditory systems, changes in air pressure in the environment are converted into neural coding that is interpreted by the brain as sound perception. For humans, the ability to detect sound enables us to hear speech, environmental sounds and enjoy music.

 

How is sound transduced in the human ear?

Every part of the ear plays a specific role in processing of sound information: the outer ear captures and filters sound; the middle ear focuses sound energy; the inner ear transduces the mechanical energy into neuronal activity.

 

 

 

Image above courtesy of 

https://openlearn.open.ac.uk/file.php/3373/SD329_1_front.jpg under Creative Commons license

Banner image courtesy of Flickr under Creative Commons license: 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/eye-fibre/166951928/