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👂 How does hearing work?

Pressure waves move eardrum and ossicles; cochlear hair cells turn bend into spikes the brain hears.

lessons

~10 min

to learn

🔬 Science

subject

Adults

level

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What you’ll learn

Air pressure becomes motionTrace sound from air pressure to eardrum and ossicular chain.Waves of compression hit the pinna and canal. The eardrum and three ossicles pass motion into the inner ear with impedance help.
The cochlea sorts frequenciesExplain place coding and hair-cell transduction.The basilar membrane maps frequency along its length. Hair cells convert bend into nerve spikes; outer hair cells amplify.
Brain builds a sound worldConnect brainstem and cortex to localization and meaning.Pathways extract direction and recognize patterns. The percept is constructed from spikes, with real mechanical limits and medical workarounds.

Questions this course answers

Order the mechanical path of a sound into the inner ear

Outer collection leads to eardrum motion, then the ossicular lever chain drives the inner-ear fluid.

What do cochlear hair cells primarily do?

Stereocilia deflection opens ion channels, changing hair-cell voltage and driving neurotransmitter release onto nerve fibers.

In your own words, how can you tell roughly whether a sound is on your left or right?

Horizontal direction leans on tiny timing and intensity differences between the two ears, computed early in the pathway.

Grounded in trusted sources

Purves et al., Neuroscience — audition chapters (basilar membrane, hair cells, pathways)
OpenStax Anatomy & Physiology — hearing and equilibrium sections
NIDCD (NIH) public pages on how we hear and hair cell function
Standard otology teaching materials on middle-ear impedance matching

Every Wunder lesson is built from real, reputable sources — never invented.

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