Have you ever wondered about how our hearing works? Did you ever consider all the different parts of the ear? In this episode, we discuss the different parts of the auditory pathway. We discuss the outer ear, the ear drum and ossicles, and the fascinating structure of the cochlea. Hearing starts with our ears and truly happens in our brains, but we’ll discuss that more in future episodes.

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Welcome to All About Audiology, a podcast that’s, well, all about Audiology! I’m your host, Dr. Lilach Saperstein. Last episode, we spoke about what Audiology is, and how varied the field is, and how many different things audiologists do. And today we’re going to talk all about how hearing works.

Anytime I learn about the intricacies of how our body works I get so fascinated and so inspired and then also I’m in awe of just how much there is to understand. So even when I learned about how enzymes work or how our kidneys function and then I realize there are people who study that for decades- just that one element- meanwhile all millions of things are happening within our bodies. All the time! -it’s amazing!

When I started learning about the ear it not only gave me this incredible awe and inspiration about how our hearing works but just overall about how incredible our biology is. And how wonderful it is that when you study it and start to see how wonderful and complex one part is, it even gives you this excitement about wanting to learn more about other parts of the body and other areas of science. So if you share this kind of inspiration and awe, I think you’ll enjoy this episode where we’re taking a dive into the anatomy and physiology of our ear and of our auditory system.

Let’s start with a quick introduction to sound which in itself is so interesting. Sound waves are essentially movement of particles in the air in an organized way- vibrations- and there’s definitely this sense of magic when you think about how it’s literally movement of pieces of matter in the air and that these vibrations we’re able to produce with our mouths to make speech, with instruments for music, or by dropping something on the ground and it makes the sound because you’ve displaced -you physically moved the pieces in the air. When we’re manipulating the air around us and we’re making the sounds, that movement is picked up by the receiving organ in our ear. It takes my breath away!

The ear has three major parts: the outer ear, the middle ear, and inner ear. And the outside of the ear, the piece we just call our ear, that’s called the pinna, and it funnels sound into the ear canal opening. At the end of this canal, we have eardrum; the eardrum is made up of three very fine and delicate layers of skin. The ear drum vibrates in response to the different incoming waves and on the other side of the ear drum we have this middle ear space. This is a place where we have the three tiniest bones of the human body. The first one, the malleus, or the hammer, is connected to the eardrum so any movement that comes in and makes movement of the eardrum also is moving the malleus on the other side of it and that’s connected to the incus and the stapes, the other two little bones. The malleus, incus, and stapes, also known as the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup, based on their shapes. (So it’s like their Latin name and then just the English equivalent of those names.) These are called “the ossicles” which also is a very cute little word that just means “little bones”- ossicle – like popsicles [laughs]. Okay.