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Updated: May 11, 2025
Hearing is finally a psychological or mental condition, a state of consciousness, but is always associated with certain physiological processes, which are initiated by a physical stimulus in the form of waves in a fluid surrounding the hair-cells of the auditory end-organ; which waves may again be traced to the movements of the bones of the middle ear, caused by the swinging to and fro of the drum-head, owing to vibrations of the air produced by a sounding body.
The purpose of the outer ear is to collect the air vibrations and convey them to the middle ear, which passes them on to the inner ear, where they produce the vibrations in the fluid therein contained and which affect the end-organ and nerve-endings, and thus initiate the essential physiological processes in the nerve of hearing. These small ear-bones have joints like larger ones.
The membranous portion consists of a series of canals communicating with some similarly membranous sacs, the whole being surrounded by and filled with fluid. These latter communicate with an extension termed the cochlea, which contains a central canal in which that collection of cells is found which constitutes the end-organ, among them the hair-cells, about which the nerve ends.
The entire apparatus has for its purpose the conversion of the vibrations of the air into the vibrations of a fluid, which thus stimulates the end-organ, and brings about those changes in the nerve which result in corresponding changes in the brain, that are associated, in some way we cannot explain, to that state of consciousness we term hearing.
This end-organ in the cochlea may be compared very fitly to the telephone which receives the message, and that portion of the brain where the auditory tract ends, to the telephone at the distant end of the path, the listener there representing consciousness.
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