Abstract
Among the senses, the mechanical ones, hearing, balance, touch, and proprioception, are most numerous but least understood. The status of hearing is very specific. This sense is deeply rooted in social living that requires effective means of communication. In many species, communication is ensured by sounds. Animals produce a large variety of sounds; some are nonvocal, while others are vocal. Some species only produce innate vocalizations, whereas others, such as singing birds and some mammals, like bats, dolphins, elephants, are vocal learners. Audition is a prerequisite for vocal learning. Without auditory experience, juveniles will not be able to produce an adult form of sound. Human evolution is characterized by the development of acoustic communication with speech and language, that is, by the development of an unparalleled ability of making sense out of sounds, which involves the rapid decoding of the spectrotemporal properties of the acoustic signals to extract both phonetic and linguistic information. Hearing-impaired babies could never reach normal proficiency in their mother language if they were not screened and diagnosed early enough, specifically, within months at most, and hard-of-hearing aging people become dangerously isolated. Both populations require appropriate and fast intervention, which concerns not less than several hundred million people worldwide. Therefore, better understanding how hearing works, from peripheral sensory organs to the brain, is a long-lasting challenge of prominent importance.
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Abbreviations
- ABR:
-
Auditory brainstem response
- ANSD:
-
Auditory neuropathy spectrum disorders
- BM:
-
Basilar membrane
- CM:
-
Cochlear microphonic – reflects the electrical potential generated in the hair cells of the organ of Corti in response to acoustic stimulation
- dB HL:
-
Decibels hearing level
- dB SPL:
-
Decibels sound pressure level
- DFNA DFNB DFNX:
-
Refers to the mode of inheritance of the isolated forms of deafness: autosomal dominant or recessive or linked to the X chromosome
- DPOAE:
-
Distortion product otoacoustic emissions
- ENT:
-
Ear nose throat physicians
- IHC:
-
Inner hair cell – the primary sensory cell of the cochlea
- ILD:
-
Interaural level difference
- ITD:
-
Interaural time difference
- OAE:
-
Otoacoustic emissions
- OHC:
-
Outer hair cell – a sensorimotor cell that amplifies the motion of the hearing organ
- MET:
-
Mechanoelectrical transduction
- USH:
-
Usher syndrome
- c:
-
Sound velocity
- f:
-
Frequency
- Hz:
-
Hertz
- I:
-
Intensity
- L:
-
Level
- P:
-
Pressure
- Pa:
-
Pascal (or N.m−2)
- Phon:
-
Unit of loudness (equal loudness contours)
- Q:
-
Quality factor of resonance (ratio of resonance frequency over bandwidth)
- S:
-
Sensation
- SM:
-
Scala media
- ST:
-
Scala tympani
- SV:
-
Scala vestibuli
- Sone:
-
Unit of loudness
- TM:
-
Tectorial membrane
- v:
-
Volume velocity of the particles of the conducting medium
- W:
-
Acoustic power
- Z:
-
Acoustic impedance (expressed in kg m−2 s−1 or rayl)
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Petit, C., El-Amraoui, A., Avan, P. (2013). Audition: Hearing and Deafness. In: Pfaff, D.W. (eds) Neuroscience in the 21st Century. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1997-6_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1997-6_26
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-1996-9
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