Dr. Konstantina Stankovic

The fancy term for it is the tympanic membrane.

That sets in motion the smallest bones in the body.

They are called the malleus, incus, and stapes, which is Latin for the hammer, the anvil, and the stir bone.

As they vibrate, they set in motion fluids in the inner ear.

And this is where these incredibly delicate sensory cells reside.

They are called hair cells, but that has nothing to do with this hair.

And as they deflect their sensors on top of their surface, which are called stereocilia, that leads to flow of ionic current and release of neurotransmitter and excitation of the auditory nerve, which then sends signals all the way to the brain.

So in the inner ear occurs this, it's called mechanoelectrical transduction, because we are converting a mechanical stimulus into an electrical one.

And there are two broad categories of hearing loss.

One is the so-called conductive hearing loss, and the other is sensorineural hearing loss.

The conductive hearing loss affects the ability of sounds to be conducted to the inner ear.

That can be if there is a hole in the eardrum or there is fluid behind the eardrum or these hearing bones don't vibrate, they are frozen because of a disease process.

There are surgical treatment options for that type of hearing loss and non-surgicals, which include amplification with hearing aids.

So that's an easier type of hearing loss to have.

But the more common type of hearing loss is the sensory neural hearing loss.

It's the one that originates from the inner ear.

And why it's been so challenging to study and to crack that nut is because it's tiny.

It's a tiny organ.

It's encased in the densest bone in the body, and it's located deep in the base of the skull.

You may even ask, how tiny?