Dr. Konstantina Stankovic

have vision, they are blind, and they are surviving superbly well because of their incredibly astute sense of hearing, like bats or moles.

sounds as they set in motion the tympanic membrane, the eardrum, and then lead to motion of hearing bones.

There are different modes of vibration depending on both sound intensity and frequency.

Once they get transmitted to vibration within the inner ear, everything is tuned in the inner ear.

So the cochlea is a coiled organ.

Cochlea even means a snail.

So now if you uncoil it, then it's a tube.

And high frequencies are encoded at the base, close to the middle ear, and low frequencies far away at the apex.

And so when sound waves come in, if they're of high frequency, they will cause primarily vibration at the base of the cochlea.

If they are of low frequency, they have to travel all the way up, and this is where speech resides, at higher frequencies.

It's interesting that the high frequency end of the cochlea tends to be more vulnerable to various insults, like noise levels that you pointed out, certain drugs, and aging.

Now, in terms of music being so essential for being human and our ability to communicate, this is a podcast.

So it highlights how important our ability to communicate and hear that communication is essential.

It can create vivid experiences.

It can be very engaging, even without seeing people.

And looking at that throughout history, for example, Socrates in ancient Greece said, speak so that I can see you.

And then in the medieval years, it was a French writer and physician, François Rabelais, who said of all the senses, hearing is the fittest for the reception of the arts, sciences, and disciplines.

And then 500 years later, Helen Keller, who was both blind and deaf and is one of the most celebrated people of the 20th century, said, deafness is a worse misfortune because it separates you from people as opposed to things.

So that gets at your question of why is hearing important for us?

It's important not only to communicate that's direct relevance, but there are indirect major effects on how we feel, on our emotional, relational, and cognitive well-being.