The time course of the acoustic reflex

Ear and Hearing
|July 1, 1984
PubMed

Related Concept Videos

Echo01:06

Echo

The human ear cannot distinguish between two sources of sound if they happen to reach within a specific time interval, typically 0.1 seconds apart. More than this, and they are perceived as separate sources.
Imagine the sound is reflected back to the ears. Assuming that the source is very close to the human, the difference between hearing the two sounds—the emitted sound and the reflected sound—may be more than the minimum time for perceiving distinct sounds. If this is the case, then the...
Auditory Pathway01:15

Auditory Pathway

Auditory pathways constitute the complex neural circuits responsible for transmitting and interpreting auditory information from the peripheral auditory system to the brain. Sound waves are initially captured by the outer ear, funneled through the ear canal, and reach the tympanic membrane (eardrum). These vibrations are transmitted via the middle ear's ossicles to the inner ear's cochlea.
When viewed cross-sectionally, the cochlea reveals the scala vestibuli and scala tympani flanking the...
Impulse Response01:17

Impulse Response

The impulse response is the system's reaction to an input impulse. In an RC circuit, the voltage source is the input, and the capacitor's voltage is the output. The system's state and output response before and after input excitation are distinctly defined.
Kirchhoff's law forms an input signal equation, with the capacitor's current and voltage providing the output. Substituting the current and dividing by RC yields a differential equation. The output for an impulse input is the impulse...