Sound & Thresholds
The range of sound frequencies that the average human ear can hear.
What is: 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz
Cranial nerve 8 is located:
What is: at the pons-medulla junction.
This part of the brain processes signals from the vestibular system to coordinate balance, posture, and eye movements.
What is: the cerebellum
This part of the brain, located in the temporal lobe, is the primary region responsible for processing auditory information, including sound recognition and speech comprehension.
What is: the primary auditory cortex
This term refers to the minimum change in magnitude between two stimuli that one can perceive.
What is: the just-noticeable difference (jnd).
The minimum intensity of sound that can be heard by a typical human ear is known as this.
What is: absolute threshold
This structure, located on the thalamus, is responsible for coordinating nerve impulses to regions of the brain.
What is: the medial geniculate nucleus (MGN)
The movement of this viscous fluid inside the semicircular canals helps stimulate hair cells, which send signals to the brain to detect rotational motion.
What is: endolymph
This process involves detecting basic features of sound, such as pitch, volume, and frequency before higher-level recognition or interpretation.
What is: bottom-up processing.
This phenomenon occurs when conflicting visual and auditory stimuli lead to a third, perceived sound that is different from the original one (multimodal processing)
What is: The McGurk Effect
In sound, the number of vibrations per second of a sound wave is it's:
What is: pitch
Also acceptable: frequency (Hz)
This structure vibrates against the oval window of the cochlea to transmit sound.
What is: the stapes.
This fluid-filled structure in the inner ear contains the otolith organs responsible for detecting changes in head position and motion.
What is: the vestibule
A loud, sudden noise would most likely be processed by this region of the brain.
What is: the inferior colliculus.
This visual representation on an audiogram shows the range of frequencies and intensities of human speech sounds.
What is: the speech banana
This device in the inner ear helps individuals with severe sensorineural hearing loss by directly stimulating the auditory nerve bypasses damaged hair cells.
What is: cochlear implant
Identify two brain structures associated with auditory processing in the midbrain.
What are: thalamus and inferior colliculus.
Components of the membranous structure (list all).
Cochlear ducts, semicircular ducts, otolith organs
This phenomenon occurs when a person mishears a word or phrase because their brain fills in the gaps based on context or prior knowledge, such as hearing "I scream" instead of "ice cream" in a noisy environment.
What is: top-down processing.
These conditions can cause one to miss a stimulus.
- Too brief to demand attention
- Too subtle to perceive (below jnd)
- Below the threshold.
A person who cannot hear ranges near 10,000 Hz at about 50 dB is said to have:
What is: moderate hearing loss
This region, associated with speech production, is located in the inferior frontal gyrus.
What is: Broca's area
Movement along the sagittal plane, such as nodding your head up and down to say "yes" is likely to stimulate:
What is: the saccule
List the pathway of sound from the cochlea to the 1ยบ auditory cortex.
Cochlea --> CNVIII --> pons medulla junction --> contralateral pons --> inferior colliculus --> MGN of the thalamus --> temporal lobe --> primary auditory cortex
List all anatomical terms related to sound (environment --> CN)
Auricle, ear canal, TM, (ossicles) malleus, incus, stapes, cochlea, hair cells, cochlear nerve branch of the vestibulocochlear nerve.