ROUND WINDOW MEMBRANE OF THE COCHLEA: Experiments Demonstrating Its Physical Responses

Abstract

ONE OF the fundamental difficulties in the understanding of hearing is the lack of knowledge of the physical characteristics of the aural structures. Improved knowledge of the physics of the cochlea not only would give a more direct understanding of the processes found in the inner ear but would give the physicist and the mathematician the necessary foundation for mathematical-physical interpretations. The mathematical treatises have been handicapped in the past because the mathematician did not possess the necessary knowledge of physical constants to formulate his initial equations. The most splendid mathematical solution of any problem is unsatisfactory if the formulation of the initial equation contained physical errors. Many times biomathematicians working on the ear were defeated in their endeavors because the magnitude of dampening, elasticity, tension and other fundamental physical qualities of the anatomic structures could not be determined with the available methods. Experiments were devised to furnish experimental data