Ears

Listen. Whatever you're hearing — the hum of a computer, your kids playing, a car going by — is thanks to your ears.

Hearing is their main job, but it's not all our ears do. These delicate organs also need care and protection, so let's take a look at how they work and what conditions and problems can affect them.

All About Ears
There's a lot more to an ear than what you see on the side of your head. The ear is made up of three different sections that work together to collect sounds and relay them to the brain: the outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear.

The outer ear, the part that is visible on the side of your head, is called the pinna or auricle. It's made of tough cartilage covered by skin. The pinna's main job is to gather sounds and funnel them to the ear canal, which leads to the middle ear. The pinna, which includes the earlobe, is the part that people pierce to wear earrings.

The ear canal, the hollow passage that leads to the eardrum, is also part of the outer ear. Glands in the skin lining the ear canal produce earwax, which protects the canal by cleaning out dirt and helping to prevent infections.

The middle ear is an air-filled cavity about the size of a pea. It turns sound waves into vibrations and delivers them to the inner ear. The middle ear is separated from the outer ear by the eardrum, or tympanic membrane, a thin, cone-shaped piece of tissue stretched tight across the ear canal.

To hear properly, the pressure on both sides of your eardrum needs to be equal. When you go up or down in elevation, the air pressure changes and you may feel a popping sensation as your ears adjust. Ears are able to adjust thanks to the narrow Eustachian tube that connects the middle ear to the back of the nose and acts as a sort of pressure valve, opening to keep the pressure equalized on both sides of the eardrum.

The middle ear also includes the three smallest bones in the body, located just past the eardrum and collectively known as the ossicles. The ossicles consist of:

the malleus (Latin for "hammer"), which is attached to the eardrum

the incus ("anvil"), which is attached to the malleus

the stapes ("stirrup"), which is attached to the incus and is the smallest bone in the body

The inner ear consists of two tiny organs called the cochlea and the semicircular canals. The snail-shaped cochlea act as a sort of microphone, converting the vibrations from the middle ear into nerve impulses that travel to the brain along the cochlear nerve, also known as the auditory nerve.

The semicircular canals look like three tiny, interconnected tubes sticking out in loops from the top of the cochlea. It's their job to help you balance. The canals are filled with fluid and lined with tiny hairs. When your head moves, the fluid in the canals sloshes around, moving the hairs. The hairs send this position information as impulses through the vestibular nerve to your brain. The brain interprets these impulses and sends messages to the muscles that help keep you balanced.

When you spin around and stop, the reason you feel dizzy is because the fluid in your semicircular canals continues to slosh around for awhile, giving your brain the idea that you're still spinning even when you aren't. When the fluid stops moving, the dizziness goes away.

The cochlear nerve, which is attached to the cochlea and relays sound information to the brain, and the vestibular nerve, which carries balance information from the semicircular canals to the brain, are collectively known as the vestibulocochlear nerve, or 8th cranial nerve.