Hearing and Music
Loud noise, including music, much like sun tanning, can lead to permanent body damage manifesting itself later in life. Prevention, ear plugs for concerts and sunscreen for outdoor activities, as well as understanding how sound works is the best medicine for maintaining our physiology.
Sound starts by being funneled from our outer ear through the ear canal and to the eardrum. This membrane vibrates with louder sounds the eardrum beats harder. The eardrum pushes against tiny bones in your middle ear called ossicles. These bones oscillate causing waves of fluid to roll up your inner ear’s cochlea, a conical chamber filled with some 10,000 hair cells.
(Did You Know? The cochlea is often spiral shaped similar to nautilus sea creatures (snails). Rene Descartes the philosopher was also a mathematician who first described the spiral. Its spiral growth pattern is often referred to as the “Golden Rule” or growth ratio of 1:1.6. )
The waves cause the hair cells to sway. That movement is turned into electricity, which triggers the release of a chemical neurotransmitter that washes over neighboring nerve fibers. These nerve fibers connect with your auditory cortex where it registers as sound.
Hearing loss occurs from several abuses. An overload of chemicals from the hair cells can damage nerve fibers. Some hair cells just become overworked and die. Obviously, a damaged ear drum will retard sound. As we age, ossicles do not move as easily and therefore do not transmit as much sound.
Ringing in your ears comes from the brain. If it does not receive the signals it expects from your nerves, it turns up the volume by producing abnormal nerve signals. The high-pitched ringing after a concert is the sound of some of your hearing dying.
M. Charles Liberman, PhD, professor of otology and laryngology at Harvard Medical School
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