PSYO 1011 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Sound, Rarefaction, Low Frequency

• School: Dalhousie University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYO 1011
• Professor: Leanne Stevens,Shelley Adamo,Kevin Duffy,Jennifer Stamp

Document Summary

Topics of the day: sound waves, anatomy of the ear, auditory perception. 1: low amplitude would have a smaller distance between the peak and trough, the auditory system encodes amplitude as loudness, the unit of loudness is decibels (db) named after alexander. It has a range of sensitivity to frequency. Anatomy of the ear: the cone part of the hear is the pinna, they have hills and valleys in it. Perilymph: second chamber is called the scala media. Contains the cells that transduce the sound waves into neural impulses. Organ of corti have cilia coming out of them (hair cells) when they bend b/c of the tectorial membrane, neural impulses are created. Over the hair cells is the tectorial membrane. Hair cells create output to form the auditory nerve: last chamber is called scala tympani. Perilymph: oval window, connects the cochlea and the stirrup. If it"s a high frequency wave it will peak close to the base.