The Ear
15 min. read
Published 5 July 2021
Reviewed 26 January 2025
We hear sounds all day long, but how does this work? Learn everything you need to know about how the human ear and our hearing works.
The outer ear is a small part of the overall hearing organ. At first glance, we only see the part of the ear that protrudes from the head, called the auricle. The more significant portion of the ear is protected inside the skull. The human hearing system consists of three components: the outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear. They are connected via the ear canal, and all acoustic systems run through them.
The tones, sounds and speech we hear are nothing more than oscillations (a movement back and forth in a regular rhythm) of the air. Before sound waves are turned into acoustic information that we can recognise and understand, they are delivered from the outer to the inner ear via the middle ear and pass through all parts of our hearing system via the auditory nerve before finally arriving in the brain as a signal.
The processes above show how sound waves reach the inner ear via air conduction. Although not as effective, sound waves can also contact the inner ear via bone conduction. The air hits the outside of the skull and makes it oscillate slightly; conducted by the liquids in the ear, oscillations also reach the hair cells via this path.
If you find your voice strange in video recordings, you're not alone! Bone sound wave conduction is responsible for this. When we hear our voices in video recordings, the sound waves are only conducted via the air. The bone conduction portion that we usually get at the same time during talking is missing!
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