![]() The opposite end of the anvil is fused with the stirrup (so anvil and stirrup act as one bone). The hammer is arranged so that one end is attached to the eardrum, while the other end forms a lever-like hinge with the anvil. Directly behind and connected to the eardrum-which is essentially, a large collector of sound-is the hammer. The ossicles are arranged in a special order to perform their job. When the eardrum vibrates as sound hits its surface, it sets the ossicles into motion. So how do we take in airborne sounds, which are simply vibrations of the air molecules, and get them past the air-fluid interface between our ear canal and the inner ear? We need a system to use those air vibrations to push against the surface of the inner ear fluid. That is simply because most of the sound is reflected off the water's surface. ![]() If someone screams at you from above the water's surface, the sounds are tremendously muted, making it difficult to understand or even hear at all. As an example, most people have first hand knowledge of hearing underwater. But, our inner ear is filled with fluid, and this represents a problem. The leveraging capabilities of the middle ear ossicles are needed to generate the large forces that allow us to hear.Īs terrestrial animals, we live in a gaseous environment. They are used to exert a large force over a small distance at one end of the lever by applying a smaller force over a longer distance at the opposite end. This is because the middle ear ossicles are arranged and interact with each other as a lever system.Īll levers generate a mechanical advantage. To understand the role of these bones in hearing requires an understanding of levers. ![]() Found in the middle ear, they are a part of the auditory system between the eardrum and the cochlea (the spiral-shaped conduit housing hair cells that are involved in transmitting sound to the brain). The hammer, anvil and stirrup-also known as the malleus, incus, and stapes, respectively, and collectively, as "middle ear ossicles"-are the smallest bones in the human body. Vetter, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the Tufts University Sackler School of Biomedical Sciences, sounds out an answer to this query.
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