The structure of the human ear - interesting facts. Hearing organs provide essential communication with the outside world
This is a complex and surprisingly accurate mechanism that allows you to perceive various sounds. Some people have a very delicate ear by nature, which is able to pick up the most accurate intonations and sounds, while others, as they say, “have stepped on the ear”. But how the human ear works? Here's what the researchers write.
Outer ear
The human hearing aid can be divided into the outer, middle, and inner ear. The first part is everything that we see externally. The outer ear consists of the ear canal and auricle... The internal auricle is designed so that a person begins to perceive various sounds. It consists of a special cartilage that is covered with skin. The lower part of the human ear has a small lobe of fatty tissue.
There is an opinion that biologically active points are located in the area of \u200b\u200bthe outer ear and auricle, but this theory has not been confirmed. It is for this reason that it is believed that ears can only be pierced by a competent specialist who knows the coordinates. And this is another mystery - how the human ear works. Indeed, according to the Japanese theory, if you find biologically active points and massage or act on them with acupuncture, then you can even treat some diseases.
The outer ear is the most vulnerable part of this organ. She is often injured, so she must be regularly monitored and protected from harmful influences. The auricle can be compared to the outside of a speaker. It receives sounds, and their further transformation is already taking place in the middle ear.
Middle ear
It consists of the eardrum, malleus, incus and stapes. The total area is about 1 cubic centimeter. You will not be able to see externally how it works human ear secondary without special devices, since this area is located under the temporal bone. Separates the middle ear from the outer eardrum. Their function is to generate and transform sounds, as it happens inside a loudspeaker. This area is connected to the nasopharynx by the Eustachian tube. If a person has a stuffy nose, then this invariably affects the perception of sounds. Many people notice that hearing deteriorates sharply during a cold. And the same happens if the middle ear region is inflamed, especially in diseases such as purulent otitis media. Therefore, it is important to protect your ears during frosts, as this can then affect your hearing for life. Thanks to the Eustachian tube, the pressure in the ear is normalized. If the sound is very strong, it may break. To prevent this from happening, experts advise opening your mouth during very loud sounds. Then the sound waves do not fully reach the ear, which partially reduces the risk of rupture. Only an otolaryngologist can see this area with the help of special devices.
Inner ear
How the human ear worksthat is deep inside? It resembles a complex maze. This area consists of the temporal and bony parts. Outwardly, this mechanism resembles a snail. In this case, the temporal labyrinth is inside the bone one. In this area, the vestibular apparatus is located, and it is filled with a special fluid - endolymph. The inner ear is associated with the transmission of sounds to the brain. The same organ allows you to maintain balance. Disorders in the inner ear can lead to an inadequate response to loud sounds: headache, nausea and even vomiting begin. Various diseases the brain, such as meningitis, also cause similar symptoms.
Hearing hygiene
To help your hearing aid last as long as possible, doctors advise you to follow these guidelines:
Keep your ears warm, especially when it's freezing outside, and also avoid walking in cold weather without a hat. Remember that in such a situation, the ear area can be most affected;
Avoid loud and harsh sounds;
Do not try to clean your ears yourself with sharp objects;
In case of hearing impairment, headache with harsh sounds and discharge from the ears, you should consult an otolaryngologist.
By following these rules, you can preserve your hearing for a long time. However, even with modern development medicine is not yet all known about , how the human ear works. Scientists continue their research and are constantly learning a lot about this organ of hearing.
The ear is a rather vulnerable system. Particularly fragile is the structure of the human ear for infants and young children. The reason lies in his immaturity, through which in childhood even a banal virus can easily give ear complications.
Hearing properties
The human ear has the ability to pick up sound waves and convert them into electrical impulses.
Human hearing organs are able to perceive very loud sounds and a barely audible rustle. The human ear in adulthood is able to pick up sounds from 12 to 20 thousand Hertz, in childhood - up to 22 thousand Hertz.
In addition, thanks to the hearing organs, a person is free to navigate in space and maintain balance.
Adult ear
Nature has created a unique human ear - its structure is as follows:
The outer ear consists of the auricle and the auditory canal. A feature of the auricle is tuberosity, due to which the acoustics of the further transmitted sounds are clean, without distortion.
The outer ear picks up all sound tones, and the brain, where the information from the inner ear arrives, analyzes it and determines exactly where the sound is coming from. This entire process takes only a hundredth of a second.
The auricle is also capable of amplifying sound.
In the ear canal there are special glands that produce a specific substance - earwax. It protects the inside of the ear from harmful environmental influences.
The middle ear consists of the tympanic membrane, the tympanic cavity, the mastoid process, and the auditory (Eustachian) tube.
The eardrum is a thin membrane that insulates the middle ear from the outer ear. It is stretched along the edges, and relaxed in the middle, has a conical shape. On the side of the outer ear, the membrane has thin villi, on the inside, a mucous membrane.
The eardrum vibrates under the influence of sound waves. Due to the different tension and its shape, it can transmit sound waves of different frequencies.
The tympanic cavity is a small niche in which tiny bones are located - the hammer, incus and stapes. Powered by tiny muscles, they redirect sound waves into the auditory labyrinth. The mastoid process is located right there in the depression. This is a small bone, in the thickness of which air cells are interconnected.
The tympanic cavity and nasopharynx are connected to each other thanks to the auditory (Eustachian) tube. Its surface is fleecy. When dust particles enter the middle ear, these villi begin to move and push foreign objects into the nasopharynx.
At the bottom of the middle ear, there is an opening to the inner ear. Its structure is a bony labyrinth, which is divided into parts by thin membranes.
Inside the labyrinth there is another labyrinth of thin films - the inner one, consisting of connective tissue.
The cochlea is located in the middle of the inner ear. These are thin canals about 32 mm long, coiled into a spiral. There is lymph in its cavity. It is in the cochlea that sound waves are converted into electromagnetic waves. In the very center of the labyrinth, on the back wall, there is a peripheral receptor for the organ of balance.
No less vulnerable than the middle, the inner ear, the structure of which is also different increased fragility... Launched otitis media, head trauma, infections can cause inflammation of the mucous membranes of the labyrinth (labyrinthitis).
As a result, begin severe dizziness, nausea, vomiting, impaired coordination of movements, possibly spontaneous erratic movement eyeballs... Dizziness attacks can be repeated several times a day, and in severe cases, every hour.
Slightly different anatomy
The structure of the human ear in adults and children is slightly different.
In children, its anatomical features are as follows:
This difference in the structure of the ears makes the hearing organs in childhood very vulnerable to environmental factors. Frequent infectious diseases ears in children, especially young children. The most common condition is middle ear otitis media, which blocks auditory tube, fluid accumulates behind the eardrum. In severe cases, pus is released from the ears and blood may flow.
The risk of middle ear inflammation decreases as children develop hearing. Finally, the middle ear is formed up to 12 years old, and the auditory organs fully mature up to 14-19 years.
can tell a lot. Hearing is a familiar feeling for everyone. But what is a pair of auricles? Why, when we put a shell to our ear, we believe that we hear the sound of the sea?- Men are more likely to experience hearing loss than women.... The fact is that the male half of the population works in a noisy environment, the constant work in which is the cause of the damaged hearing.
- Ears can self-clean... There are pores in the ear canal that produce wax. With the help of small hairs, they push it out of the ears.
- When a person brings a shell to his ear, he thinks he hears the sound of the ocean, but this is not so... All we hear is the sound of blood running through our veins.
- Hearing loss can be caused by water that has entered the ear for some reason... This phenomenon is most often observed in children. In turn, this causes an ear infection. It is not easily treatable, but has dire consequences if ignored.
- Thanks to the ears, a person maintains his balance in space... There are 3 canals near the cochlea. They function as a gyroscope, keeping the person in balance and providing information on whereabouts. It is often possible to observe when a person has ear infection, he has difficulty keeping his balance.
- Rugby players have ears that look like cauliflower ... This is easy to explain. During the game, the outer cartilage of the ear is repeatedly damaged and becomes cabbage-like over time.
- Children have more sensitive hearing that weakens over the years... When a person is born, he can hear even the lowest sounds, for example, below the sounds that the piano makes. The same goes for high pitched sounds.
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- Earwax was very actively used in the household... Scribes during the Middle Ages extracted pigments from it, with the help of which they illustrated books. They also helped the seamstresses to keep the ends of the threads from fraying. Previously, there were no waxed threads. In 1832, a book described that sulfur was able to alleviate the pain of a puncture injury.
- The World Eskimo Olympic Games are famous for some interesting game... It's called ear tug of war. The unusual sport is popular. Two opponents sit down opposite each other. A loop of one rope is put on each ear. Further, they try to pull the cord until it comes off the opponent's ear or he complains of pain.
- It is known that sailors began to wear the first gold earrings... This was necessary so that they could be buried with dignity. This is the application of the decoration.
- According to statistics, about 73% of people during a concert turn to their interlocutor with their right ear... They try to hear the conversation or decipher the speech against the background of very loud music. Some do not betray this meaning and listen with either one or the other ear, depending on the situation.
- Nose and ears are two parts of the body that can grow throughout a person's life... The ear ossicles themselves do not grow; only the earlobe is stretched.
- According to scientists, hearing deteriorates if a person eats a lot.... That is why, after a hearty meal, we experience discomfort in this area of \u200b\u200bthe face.
- Surprisingly, the ears "work" around the clock... They continue to hear sounds even when the person is sleeping. But how then do we not wake up? The fact is that the brain ignores all extraneous noises at this time, giving the body an opportunity to rest.
- African land is famous for a certain tribe named Maaban... They are unique in that they live in complete silence. Members of the tribe, when they reach old age, can hear whispers at a distance of 300 m.
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One of essential organs senses are considered ears. It is difficult to imagine life without hearing, it helps a person to navigate in space, to perceive what is happening in full. Many interesting facts are connected with human hearing.
The human ear perceives the widest range of sounds in childhood. Toddlers and preschoolers hear sound waves from 20 hertz to a minimum of 20 thousand hertz maximum.
Age-related hearing loss or hearing loss is a very common condition. According to world statistics, 60% of the elderly (65 to 74 years old) and 72% of the old (75 and above) people suffer from this disease. Modern medical technology makes it possible to improve hearing with hearing aids, but only 15% of people with hearing loss use them.
Men are more likely to experience hearing loss at a young age. The reason is simple - work in disturbed areas sanitary standards noise pollution, as well as where loud sounds are the norm, a cost of the profession.
Unusual facts that not many people know about
Not so long ago, scientists found out that before entering the brain, the sound is "filtered" in the ears. Moreover, each ear independently performs this procedure, recognizing sounds and sending them to the correct hemisphere of the brain.
Newborn babies do not clean their ears, because they clean themselves. The sulfur produced by the pores in the auricle is pushed out by small hairs (cilia) or washed out with water. Nothing changes with age, the ears are cleaned on their own throughout a person's life.
Using ear sticks to remove wax from the ears often leads to the formation of wax plugs. Children under 6 are especially susceptible to this. To maintain health, it is better to refuse the use of cotton swabs.
Listening to music with headphones at high volume long time leads to hearing impairment and pathological changes in the ears. In addition, the earbuds increase bacteria growth by up to 700 times.
Continuous noise in excess of 85 dB can damage the membranes and impair hearing. For children, the maximum permissible listening volume without compromising health is 70 dB. Sounds of 140 dB or more will damage hearing instantly and quickly lead to death.
Ear infections interfere with a person's ability to balance and orientate in space. This happens due to the defeat of the tubules located next to the cochlea and working like a gyroscope.
Ear anatomy
The ear consists of the outer, middle, and inner ear.
Outer ear
Human auricle
The external human ear consists of the auricle and the external auditory canal. The auricle is a complex-shaped elastic cartilage covered with skin; him bottom partcalled a lobe, a fold of skin that is made up of skin and adipose tissue. The auricle is very sensitive to any damage (therefore, in wrestlers, this part of the body is very often deformed). In turn, the auricle consists of a lobe, a tragus and an antigus, a curl and its legs, an antihelix. About 10% of people have a Darwinian tubercle on the back of one or two ears - a rudimentary formation left over from the time when the ears of human ancestors were still sharp. Also, all people have ear muscles - developed, for example, in horses, they have almost atrophied in humans, as a result of which the vast majority of people do not use them.
The auricle is found only in mammals. It works as a receiver for sound waves, which are then transmitted to the inside of the hearing aid. The value of the auricle in humans is much less than in animals, therefore, in humans it is practically motionless. But many animals, waving their ears, are able to determine the location of the sound source much more accurately than humans. In aquatic mammals (whales, most pinnipeds) and some burrowing species (moles, mole rats), the auricles are absent (lost again). A number of semi-aquatic animals (beavers, sea otters, eared seals) have auricles that can close when diving.
The folds of the human auricle introduce small frequency distortions into the sound entering the ear canal, depending on the horizontal and vertical localization of the sound. Thus, the brain receives additional information to clarify . This effect is sometimes used in acoustics, including to create a sense of surround sound when using headphones.
The function of the auricle is to pick up sounds; its continuation is the cartilage of the external auditory canal, the length of which averages 25-30 mm. The cartilaginous part of the auditory canal passes into the bone, and the entire external auditory canal is lined with skin containing sebaceous, as well as sulfuric glands, which are modified sweat glands. This passage ends blindly: it is separated from the middle ear by the eardrum. The sound waves captured by the auricle strike into eardrum and cause its vibrations transmitted to the middle ear. The shape of the auricle itself is practically individual for all people - the ears can be protruded to varying degrees, stick out forward, have a pronounced or accrete lobe, Darwin's tubercle or some kind of congenital defects.
Middle ear
The main part of the middle ear is tympanic cavity - a small space with a volume of about 1 cm³ located in the temporal bone. There are three auditory ossicles: the malleus, incus and stapes - they transmit sound vibrations from the outer ear to the inner ear, while simultaneously amplifying them.
The auditory ossicles are the smallest skeletal fragments. They are a chain that transmits vibrations. The handle of the malleus is closely fused with the tympanic membrane, the head of the malleus is connected to the incus, and that, in turn, with its long process, is connected to the stapes. The base of the stapes covers the oval window of the inner ear. The presence of this chain makes it possible to increase the pressure on the oval window 20 times compared to the pressure on the eardrum.
The middle ear cavity is connected to the nasopharynx by means of the Eustachian tube (rudiment of the squirt), through which the average air pressure inside and outside of the eardrum is equalized. When it changes external pressure sometimes "clogs" the ears, which is usually solved by the fact that yawning is reflexively caused. Experience shows that ear congestion is even more effectively resolved by swallowing, or by blowing into a pinched nose at this point.
To avoid the shockwave rupture of the eardrums, military personnel are advised to open their mouths as early as possible when an explosion or shot is expected. In this case, the mechanism of air pressure compensation on the eardrum from the side of the ear canal also works with the same pressure from the side of the nasopharynx.
Inner ear
Of the three divisions of the organ of hearing and balance, the inner ear is the most complex; because of its intricate shape, it is often called webbed labyrinth, which is immersed in the bony labyrinth of the petrous part of the temporal bone. The inner ear communicates with the middle ear with oval and round windows, tightened with membranes.
The membranous labyrinth consists of the vestibule, the cochlea and the semicircular canals (located in all three mutually perpendicular planes and filled with fluids - perilymph and endolymph). The inner ear contains both the cochlea (the organ of hearing) and the vestibular system, which is the organ of balance and acceleration.
The vibrations of the oval window are transmitted to the fluid, which irritates the receptors located in the cochlea; these, in turn, form nerve impulses.
Vestibular receptors are secondary mechanoreceptors located on the canal cristae. These are hair sensitive cells of two types: a bulb shape with a rounded bottom and a cylinder shape. The hairs of both types on the cristae are located opposite to each other: on one side are located stereocilia (displacement in their direction causes excitement), and on the other - kinocilia (displacement towards which causes braking).
Your own voice, reproduced from a sound recording, is significantly different from what a person hears when talking. This is due to the fact that in the latter case, the sound reaches the ear not only through the air, but also through the bones of the skull, which better transmit low-frequency vibrations. Because of this, people with some developmental defects in the inner ear can hear the movement of their eyes in their sockets, and their own breathing sounds unbearably loud to them.
Evolution of the ear elements
The inner ear as an organ of hearing and balance originated in the first vertebrates and since then has undergone many improvements in the process of evolution. In addition, the hearing apparatus was gradually supplemented by the middle ear (first appears in amphibians) and the outer ear, which is available in birds and mammals.
Evolution of the outer and inner ear
The inner ear (labyrinth) in vertebrates arose as an organ of balance. It consisted of a vestibule, which includes round and oval sacs, as well as semicircular canals. Myxins have only one pair of semicircular canals, lampreys have two, and all other vertebrates (that is, jaw-toots: from cartilaginous fish to birds and mammals) have three.
The formation of the stapes is ensured by the release of the hyomandibular bone from the jaw suspension system, which occurred at the stage of the formation of the group of choanal or lung-breathing vertebrates (Choanata). This bone is topographically related to spiraculum, which later became the middle ear cavity and took over the function of transmitting vibrations from the integumentary formations to the ear itself. The specified bone (with the name stapes, or column) is present in all tetrapods. It has a rod-like shape with a sharp inner end. The homologous bone in fish (gimandibular) served as a support for the jaws.
The structure of the inner ear is also somewhat different in different mammals. So, the number of turns ranges from a quarter in a platypus to four in a pig and guinea pig... A whale has one and a half turns, a horse has 2, a man has 2.75, and a cat has 3.
Animals, which are most active at night, have a particularly delicate hearing. The upper frequency limit of sensitivity in dogs is 45 kHz, in cats - 50 kHz. Some mammals, in particular, bats and cetaceans, have the ability to echolocate, the upper limit of the frequency sensitivity of the ear reaches 100 kHz.
Hearing organs of invertebrates
Pathology
There are congenital defects, trauma (acoustic trauma, barotrauma) and ear diseases (otosclerosis, Meniere's disease, otitis media, labyrinthitis).
Violation of the skeletal system of the ear does not give complete deafness due to bone conduction.
Ear in culture
There are three types of ear jewelry - clips, ear cuffs and earrings. Earrings are usually inserted into pierced earlobes, but clips do not require piercing. Ear piercing has been widespread throughout the world since ancient times, especially in tribal cultures, as evidenced by numerous archaeological finds. Mummified bodies with ear punctures have been found many times. So in the Similaun glacier in Austria, the Ötzi mummy with pierced ears was found; the age of the mummy is 5300 years. In addition to decoration, it is possible to modify the ears by stretching the tunnels.
Ear reshaping surgery is called otoplasty. Most often, it is necessary to change the shape or size of the ear, since it does not undergo significant changes during its life.