0
came across this preparing for a class starting soon. One of the best videos/animations of how the ear works I've found, including some of the clearest images of how the inner ear functions and the role of inner and outer hair cells in the Organ of Corti.
From there, if you want more, this next vid shows how the motion of hair cells is converted to electrical neurotransmissions via the transference of Potassium of all things - largely the same as vid 1 up to about 4'00" then it goes into more detail:
And last, not a bad animation of the causes and types of hearing loss:
Note that this is all at the microscopic level - the average distance between the inner and outer hair cells is about 5-10 micrometers. An additional nerd fact I discovered is that they presume (although they still don't know for sure) that the inner hair cells are mainly responsible for receiving and converting louder sounds, while the outer hair cells interact with the inner cells to receive and convert quiet sounds. This is what they theorize gives human hearing the wide dynamic range it has (the loudest sounds we can perceive have about a trillion times the energy of the quietest).
Many scientists argue that this the most advanced form of bioengineering in the human body, and no man-made device is yet to surpass it for such complexity at such a minute scale.
Amazing hey (or is it just me?
)
Back to top
