“This helps us understand the mechanisms that enable us to perceive speech and music,” says Anders Fridberger, PhD.
Researchers have found that the parts of the inner ear that process sounds such as speech and music seem to work differently than other parts of the inner ear. Researchers from Linköping University in Sweden are part of the international team behind the discovery.
“This helps us understand the mechanisms that enable us to perceive speech and music,” said Anders Fridberger, PhD, professor of neuroscience at Linköping University. “We hope that more knowledge about the capabilities of the inner ear will lead to better treatments for the hearing impaired.”
To perceive speech and music, you must be able to hear low-frequency sound. In order to do this, the brain needs information from the receptors that are located deep within the inner ear, or cochlea, close to the top section of this spiral cavity. This part of the inner ear is difficult to study, as it is embedded in thick bone that is hard to reach without causing damage. Now the research team has been able to measure, in an intact inner ear, how the hearing organ reacts to sound. The results have been published in an article in the July 2016 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The inner ear, or cochlea.
According to the researchers, to make measurements in the inner ear, they used optical coherence tomography, a visualization technology for biological matter that is often used to examine the eye. Using this method, they were able to measure the inner ear response to sound without having to open the surrounding bone structures, and found that the hearing organ responds in a completely different way to sounds in the voice-frequency range.
Specifically, in this study the researchers investigated responses to sound in the low-frequency region of the inner ear to examine its mechanical response to sound in intact preparations. The team used optical coherence tomography to image sound-evoked vibration inside the intact cochlea, and showed that low-frequency sound moves a small portion of the basilar membrane, and that the motion declines in an exponential manner across the basilar membrane. Hence, the response of the hearing organ to speech-frequency sounds is different from the one evident in high-frequency cochlear regions. This finding goes against what was previously thought regarding how the inner ear works, particularly in response to low-frequency sounds. For more details about this finding, see the published article in PNAS.
In addition to Anders Fridberger and Rebecca L. Warren from Linköping University, Alfred Nuttall from the Oregon Health & Science University, and researchers from Imperial College London and the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay participated in the study.
Article: Minimal basilar membrane motion in low-frequency hearing, Rebecca L. Warren, Sripriya Ramamoorthy, Nikola Ciganovic, Yuan Zhang, Teresa M. Wilson, Tracy Petrie, Ruikang K. Wang, Steven L. Jacques, Tobias Reichenbach, Alfred L. Nuttall and Anders Fridberger, PNAS, July 2016.
Source: Medical News Today; Linköping University
Image credits: Anders Fridberger, Linköping University
Will there ever be a cure for hearing loss as I used to be pitch perfect and a vocalist but now I’m losing some hearing. I can’t sing on pitch like I used to and I would love to sing again.
Hi Chic, The current treatment for hearing loss is hearing aids and other hearing devices—these allow many vocalists and other musicians to return to music and performance. You might contact an audiologist or other hearing care professional who works specifically with musicians and understands what you need in order to perform. You may find such a specialist through the American Academy of Audiology:http://webportal.audiology.org/Custom/FindAnAudiologist.aspx.
It is also important to protect yourself from further noise-induced hearing loss, which many musicians are susceptible to. There are research studies and clinical trials underway that are investigating drug treatment for sudden onset deafness, noise-induced hearing loss, and other types of hearing loss. Here are some links to more information:
https://hearingreview.com/2015/01/new-version-drug-studies-article/
https://hearingreview.com/2016/06/auris-medical-begins-phase-3-trial-sudden-deafness-drug/
https://hearingreview.com/2014/11/dr-campbell-updates-ada-attendees-otoprotective-agents-currently-approaching-clinical-trials/
How is it different? More information is needed, please.
Hi Debra,
Thanks for your comment, and apologies that we didn’t provide enough information in the original post! We have added a new paragraph derived from the published research paper in order to clarify that the new study looks at the region of the inner ear that interprets low-frequency sounds like speech and music, and finds that low-frequency sound moves a small portion of the basilar membrane in the inner ear, and this motion declines in an exponential manner across the basilar membrane. This response to speech-frequency sounds in the low-frequency region of the cochlea is different from the response to sounds in the high-frequency cochlear regions.