[Biophysics] Re: how your ears work

[Angelo Campanella]

The Ghost wrote:
> In the event that you and others are interesed in the opinion of one of the 
> top researchers in the field on this matter, you will find it an article by 
> JJ Rosowski which was published in J Acoust Soc Am. 1991 Jul;90(1):124-35.  

	That article goes a long way toward establishing the primary parameters 
needed to model acoustic energy transfer through the outer-middle-inner 
chain. Very interesting in the parallels between cat, chinchilla and 
human ears (cats win).

	The high frequency vulnerability is cited as being around 3 kHz, and 
attributed to resonance. The same family of resonances has an 
antiresonance notch around 6 kHz for cats, so the human antiresonance 
notch may be near 6kHz.
	
> The effects of these simplifications on the model 
> are discussed as are the implications of the model results for hearing 
> protection and damage.

	The tendency to experience hearing damage at frequencies higher than 
the exciting frequency is also noted, declared to be inconsistent with 
their existing model, and simply called an anomaly, with no subsequent 
modeling provided at that time (1991). Nor was any numerical data on 
these super-frequency anomalies provided. The experimenters that 
gathered such data published them in a laryngology journal and a 1982 
book, making it difficult to study further. My oservations of the very 
frequent noise damage (NIPTS) that appears early at 4 kHz still stand 
not yet fully explained.

	Angelo Campanella