Abstract
Hearing is fundamental to how we experience the world: It facilitates communication, helps identify the location of stimuli in our environment, and serves as a first line of defense in threat detection. It also has the potential to add hedonic value to our experience as humans. This chapter addresses what sound is, and how our auditory systems transform it into perceivable, localized, actionable information. The conclusion of this chapter discusses what happens when your auditory system strays from “normal hearing,” and ventures into the realm of abnormalities, impairments, and disorders. Applications and examples related to medical device design are discussed throughout.
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Branaghan, R.J., O’Brian, J.S., Hildebrand, E.A., Foster, L.B. (2021). Hearing. In: Humanizing Healthcare – Human Factors for Medical Device Design. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64433-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64433-8_6
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