“The inability to see separates a person from things.
Inability to hear separates a person from people. ”
Emmanuel kant
A person perceives information from the outside world with the help of five senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell, which not only inform him of any changes in the environment, but also warn of a possible danger. As a result, a person gains a certain life experience. Based on this experience, acquired human behavior is formed.
The structure of the human hearing organ is anatomically represented by the external, middle and internal departments. The outer ear includes the auricle, the auditory S-shaped canal and the eardrum - the tendon plate, which is very tightly stretched. The main function of this department of the organ of hearing is to protect the middle and inner departments, as well as to capture and conduct sound waves to the middle ear.
The middle ear is a cavity that is filled with air and accommodates the Eustachian tube and auditory ossicles - the malleus, the anvil and the stapes. The purpose of this department is to amplify and conduct sound vibrations that come from the eardrum. The auditory ossicles are a very complex anatomical structure, they are movably and sequentially interconnected. The hammer, adjacent to the inner side of the eardrum, transmits its vibrations to the anvil and stapes. And it, in turn, is tightly connected to the oval window of the inner ear.
The Eustachian tube, which extends at one end into the middle ear cavity and the other into the nasopharynx, ensures equal air pressure in the middle ear.
The inner part of the organ of hearing is filled with liquid and consists of an oval window, a cochlea and a Corti organ. The oval window, perceiving sound vibrations from the auditory ossicles, transfers them to the cochlea, which is a swirling channel. The main membrane of the cochlea, located in the middle of this anatomical structure, consists of stretched fibers, over which the corti's organ is located - the main auditory receptor. Fluctuations in the cochlear fibers are perceived by the sensitive hairs of the Corti's organ and are transmitted through the auditory nerves to the auditory zone of the cerebral cortex, where the formation of sound sensations takes place.
The human hearing organ is of particular importance. Hearing, like the human taste organ, is fully formed in a newly born baby who recognizes the mother’s voice immediately after birth. Any sound vibrations of the air affecting the organ of hearing make it possible to understand what is happening around. It is the human hearing organ that allows you to exist in a social environment, perceive oral speech, allows you to communicate with other people and engage in social and labor activities. Speech is able to connect different people together, regardless of the difference in culture, religion or skin color. If there is no speech exchange between two people, then, as a rule, distrust and unconscious rejection arise between them.
If hearing loss occurs in early childhood, the child loses the ability to reproduce words and pronounce them. And although healthy people value hearing much less than sight, it is the human hearing organ that allows them to maintain a closer connection with the outside world, since it cannot be turned off even in a dream.
Hearing is the sharpest and most perfect feeling. The number of sound vibrations perceived by the organ of hearing is millions of times smaller than the number of molecules to which the organ of olfaction reacts. As a result, a person can distinguish a huge range of a wide variety of sounds and, most importantly, very accurately determine the distance to their source. The human hearing organ has such a complex structure that not one of the most modern technical devices can replace it.
And even despite the fact that a deaf-mute or hard-of-hearing person can recognize sound information by gestures or the movement of the lips of another speaker, he is not able to catch the emotional coloring of words. As it can’t completely convey its mood with gestures. All people are part of the sound world. And those who, for whatever reason in adulthood, have lost their hearing, claim that they perceive this loss very hard, because they are isolated from the external sound world.
Hearing is considered the most intelligent sense organ, because the sound recognition system is very closely connected with the limbic system, which is responsible for human emotions. For example, listening to music can evoke a wide variety of feelings - from joy and admiration to gloom and sadness. Hearing defects congenital or acquired at an early age can cause not only severe intellectual and cognitive defects, but also socio-psychological developmental defects. A person, as a purely social being, experiences a real spiritual drama along with hearing loss.
Thus, all of our five senses are not equivalent. Hearing, which is fundamental to determining the social characteristics of a person, is of the greatest importance. Hearing not only allows you to perceive information of a very different nature from the outside, but also to gain knowledge and experience strong emotions. It serves for social communication, warns of danger and helps to avoid it.