The Beautiful Mechanism that is 'Hearing', and what is Music?

in #music5 years ago (edited)

Most of us are shit scared when having to sit an exam and that fear often sticks with us long after the dreaded 'pens-down' call. This was not the case for me during one of my second year Uni exams in which one of the questions in it, simply stated, "Describe the mechanism of hearing". I still remember it vividly to this day and not because it distilled fear in me, rather it is a process that is so intricately beautiful and complex at the same time that it is impossible to forget. I am going to try my best to explain it in a simple and fun way, so anyone can understand.

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Sound Waves

In essence sound is vibration, wether its your vocal chords that vibrate went you sing or the ground when you thump it. Every sound that we hear starts of as a vibration which then gets carried by air into our ears then converted into an electrical signal. For those technically minded, 'sound' or 'noise' is a wave of compression and rarefaction, by which sound is propagated in an elastic medium such as air.

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Ear Anatomy

Use this diagram as a reference when reading the next couple of sections below

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Outer and Middle Ear

So when someone talks or sings they create sound waves that are produced by their mouth and enter into the external auditory canal of another person's ear. These sound waves hit the tympanic membrane and cause it to vibrate, much like the top of a drum would if you hit it. The vibrating tympanic membrane starts moving the little malleus bone which is located on the other side of the membrane within the inner ear. This sets of a chain-reaction through the nearby two bones, incus then stapes, respectively. This process is similar to gears in a watch. These three little bones (malleus, incus and stapes) are collectively known as the ossicles.

Inner Ear

Movements of the ossicles causes a shift in a jelly-like fluid within the cochlea (that snail looking thing) called the tectorial membrane. The inner walls of the cochlea are lined with tiny hairs, each with their own nerve that later converges with the others to form the cochlear nerve. Distortion of the tectorial membrane causes these tiny hairs to bend over. At this point the mechanical signal turns into an electrical signal, as these nerves act like a 'switch'. When they are turned one they propagate via an action potential along the course of the nerve ending up at the brain. Once this electrical signal reaches its desired area of the brain (mainly the auditory cortex of the temporal lobe), it is processed into what we perceive as sound. You can think of nerve conduction the same way you view electricity. When the sound waves have ceased and the tectorial membrane stops moving, these little hairs flick back up (for use of a better word) which cuts out the nerve signals to the brain.

Inside the Cochlea; Organ of Corti

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Tinnitus

Every time these hairs get exposed to very loud and constant sounds, some may not 'flick-up' like they once did and stay 'switched-on' permanently. Thereby, causing these nerve cells to fire constantly even when the stimulus is removed. Hence, the progressively worsening, constant ringing noise experienced by tinnitus sufferers. Look after your ears ladies and gents!

When Does Sound Become Something More

Can you answer this seemingly simple question, when does sound become music?
Its actually not an easy question to answer because there are a multitude of reasons. Let me explain. One of the things that turns sound into music is repetition, otherwise known as rhythm. Go and try it yourself, loop any naturally occurring sound like water droplets hitting the ground and listen to it long enough on repeat. You'll be surprised.
Another one is our ability to keep a beat which is almost unheard of in the animal kingdom. But if the repetitions are too close together we hear it as pitch. Our ability to hear pitch on the other-hand is commonly shared throughout the animal kingdom. If we hear different pitches at the same time we unlock another area of the brain which we interpret as harmony. Now octaves are just pitches with double or half of the frequency of another. The space between these octaves are known as scales. Another sound quality that has been described is timbre, which distinguishes pitch when played on a sax, bassoon or bowl. Now this is where it gets interesting because, most people perceive timbre the same way they perceive colour. It's a thing you can name and describe. Highlighting that everything that encompasses hearing is not just perceived in the auditory cortex but makes connections to other brain centres as well. Also our memory and emotions can drastically change how we feel about certain sounds and music. Music is also has a cultural element to it, as people from different parts of the world associate different emotions to the same sounds.

Most animals can hear just one or a couple different elements of sound such as beat, rhythm or octave equivalence but can't perceive any of the others. Combined with our capacity for language and memory, humans are the only known creatures on the earth able to to put all the peaces of the puzzle together to be able to enjoy/use music. How cool is that!

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Hope people found this interesting and enjoyed learning it as much as I did. Shoutout to @curie and @canna-curate and all the others for supporting me on my last post. It really means a lot :)

Peace

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Thanks for writing a steemstem post :)

So your images don't seem to conform the image guidelines. You might want to check out this long post about copyright, sources etc. https://steemit.com/steemstem/@steemstem/guidelines-on-copyright-standards-in-steemstem

@mathowl, no worries had fun putting it together :)
I had no idea about the use of images as breaching copyright policies, thought it was standard practice. Could I modify this post and look for images that meet the guidelines? Or is it just better to wait and follow those image guidelines for my next post? Thanks for the heads up and helpful post :)

Yeah if you could modify it that would be great! We might even curate it then :D

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Thanks for your reply, I plan to update my post to follow all guidelines necessary :)

One thing however; Anatomy is the most visual of the basic medical sciences and really needs illustrations to show structure and relationships, however many images that are available in the public domain are of very poor quality.
My question is am I able to take pictures from anatomy books I own and upload them that way? Or is it book dependant. I have a Gray's Anatomy and Thieme Atlas of Anatomy that I have paid good money for and would love to be able to showcase them here :)

That is great.

About your question: You need to get permission from the publishing company if you want to make photos of books on commercial websites. I know this is stupid but this is how copy-right works. Maybe you can head over to steemstem's discord and some of the biologists can help you out with a good source with the right licenses

Hey @mathowl, I might look at getting permission from the publishing company for future posts, for now i've decided to use images that are 'labeled for reuse'. Hope it is now well within the guidelines. Also have just started using discord so keen to come and chat with you guys over there at some point, you have been very helpful :)

Don't forget to add a link to the source. The pixabay is a good place to find images for reuse. See you on discord

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All done now with image credits in place, sorry about the muck around. I promise to be on the ball for my next post :) And thanks again @mathowl il see you on discord



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