HOW THE EAR WORKS
To understand hearing loss, it helps to understand how we hear. Your ear is an amazing organ that, very simply put, turns sound waves in the air into information in your brain.
The Outer Ear collects sound waves and directs them through the ear canal and along to the eardrum.
The Middle Ear - as the sound waves strike the eardrum it begins to vibrate. As a result of this vibration it triggers the extremely fast movement of three bones that are located in the middle ear. Via this process, sound is intensified before reaching the inner ear through a membrane known as the oval window.
The Inner Ear - the sound waves travelling through the oval window membrane create a waving motion of the fluid inside the cochlea. Resulting from this, thousands of sensing hair cells are activated and consequently, electric signals are created. These electric signals travel to the brain along the acoustic nerve where they are interpreted as sounds.
Hearing and how it works video