Auditory process

Question 1

Auditory perception

Answer 1

1. Outer ear
2. Middle ear
3. Inner ear
4. Transduction
   5&6. Sub cortical pathways
   7&8. Cortical pathways

Question 2

Outer ear

Answer 2

-Sound energy enters the ear through the pinna and auditory canal and vibrates against the tympanic membrane.

Question 3

Middle ear

Answer 3

-This the vibrates the ossicles malleus, incus then stapes (small bones suspended by ligaments) this amplifies sound. This vibrates the oval window

Question 4

Inner ear

Answer 4

-This vibrates the liquid in the cochlea which triggers transduction which turns sound energy into neural energy, this then vibrates the tectorial membrane that covers the organ of corti in the cochlea partition. This causes the cilia (damage means neural signals won’t reach the brain) on the organ of corti to vibrate and bend which causes the electrical change to change so neurotransmitters are released which sends neural messages along the auditory nerve.

Question 5

Subcortical pathways

Answer 5

• Neural energy is transmitted along the auditory nerve to the cochlear nucleus in the brain stem
• Then superior olivary nucleus
• Next the inferior colliculus in the mid brain
• Finally the medial geniculate nucleus in the thalamus which sends signals to the primary auditory cortex in the temporal lobe which has contralateral control.

Question 6

Cortical pathways

Answer 6

-Signals then are sent to the secondary auditory cortex or other areas in the temporal lobe.

Question 7

Auditory sensory memory

Answer 7

-Auditory information is held for 2-4 seconds so it can be processed. This information is temporal so only a millisecond of auditory information would not be useful. Therefore, there must be some sort of auditory buffer that holds auditory information otherwise speech could not be understood.

Question 8

Speech created

Answer 8

• When air is pushed from the lungs through the mouth
• structures in the vocal tract change the pattern of air pressure to create different speech sounds
• Speech is recognised as distinct over background noise.

Question 9

Top down vs bottom up

Answer 9

-Bottom up approach processes language based on acoustic signals from auditory receptors. This is aided by the top down approach which uses prior knowledge, expectations and context to interpret speech. Existing knowledge is used to fill in any speech gaps and can be generalised to recognise speech despite accent etc.

Question 10

Segment and recognising

Answer 10

• Auditory stimulus is continuous but sounds we recognise are identified as syllables and clustered systematically into words the sentences. Therefore, languages we are fluent in seem to be segmented and foreign language seems to be continuous.
• For example, participants understood meaningfully arranged words best and when reading broken sentences filled in the missing section without noticing.