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Designing for Head and Neck Anatomy
Published in Karen L. LaBat, Karen S. Ryan, Human Body, 2019
Ear sizes and shapes vary: close to the skull, protruding from the skull, with long or short fleshy ear lobes. The ear, auricle in Latin, is also called the pinna meaning “wing” which makes sense when you consider the shape. The visible portions of the ears are made of skin and elastic cartilage and are attached to the head with collagen structures covered by skin (Figure 3.9). Feel your ear from the upper edge to the lower tip or ear lobe. The firm outer rim of the auricle is the helix. The flatter inner portion of the auricle next to the helix is the scapha. The small springy protrusion toward the center of the ear, near the opening of the ear canal, is called the tragus. This cartilage-based feature can help ear plugs stay in place and is sometimes used as a landmark for developing dimensions for headwear. You can bend it quite easily. Hold it in place for a few seconds, release it, and it will bounce back to its original shape. Because the auricle is thin and extends beyond the many heat-carrying blood vessels of the head, it is extremely susceptible to frostbite if exposed to sufficiently low temperatures. Ear “muffs” for warmth, sound protection, or sound enhancement should comfortably encase the pinna.
How we hear
Published in Karl H.E. Kroemer, Fitting the Human, 2017
The outer ear (auricle or pinna) collects and funnels airborne sound waves into the auditory canal (meatus). At its end, the eardrum (tympanic membrane) closes the canal, separating the air-filled middle ear from the environment. More to the inside, two other membranes separate the inner ear from the middle ear by closing two “windows”, one called oval, and the other round. A watery fluid (called endolymph or perilymph) fills the inner ear, which carries the organs that sense sound (and body position, discussed in Chapter 7). Figure 6.1 shows the main features of the anatomy of the ear. Outer ear
Basic principles
Published in Michael Talbot-Smith, Audio Engineer's Reference Book, 2012
The outer ear consists of the external ear (ear flap, auricle or pinna) and the ear canal (external auditory meatus). The external ear with its inner cavity, the concha, and the ear canal act together, partly like a horn and partly like an open pipe resonator to
Biological function simulation in neuromorphic devices: from synapse and neuron to behavior
Published in Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, 2023
Hui Chen, Huilin Li, Ting Ma, Shuangshuang Han, Qiuping Zhao
As with retina and tactile neurons, auditory neuron is also one of the most important and efficient sensory system for our human beings that can detect, process and store the acoustic signal. In the auditory pathway (Figure 10(a-i)), auricle collects the external acoustic signal and then causes the eardrum to vibrate. After amplified by the ossicular chain, the vibrate is transmitted to the inner ear. When sound or vibration reaches the cochlea, it is converted into electrical signal by the hair cells. After that, the electrical signal is transferred to the neural center that integrates, analyses and stores the massive information [136,137]. The pathway for the acoustic signal in biological system will inspire us to exploit the artificial auditory neurons. For example, Wan et al. [112] reported a series of capacitively coupled multiterminal neuro-transistors based on the proton-conducting solid-state electrolyte film to realize spatiotemporal information processing by mimicking the dendritic discriminability of different spatiotemporal input sequences. Resulting from this processing, sound location functionality of the human brain was also emulated on the multiterminal neuro-transistors. Wu et al. [138] developed a neural network architecture based on HfOx memristor array with the function of handling complete sound signals received by two artificial ears.
Collagen of porcine auricle has unique biochemical and biophysical characteristics
Published in Soft Materials, 2019
Kenji Ishi, Hiroko Hoshi, Mina Takahashi, Koji Kitagawa, Masataka Hoshi, Norihiro Kawaguchi
The ears are important organs that not only facilitate hearing but also contribute to the vestibular system, which helps maintain balance. The auricle is an external tissue that maintains flexibility to external stimulation and guides sound waves to the middle ear. Auricular components include subcutaneous fat, cartilage, and connective tissue, all of which are composed of various ECM components (5,6). Auricular cartilage from porcine displayed significantly higher glycosaminoglycan and collagen contents compared to human, rat, and rabbit (7). For elastic tissue to develop, it needs increased mesenchymal cell density and the expression of tropoelastin, collagen, and glycosaminoglycan (8,9). However, there have been few reports about the extraction of auricular collagen and the analysis on its biophysical and biological functions.
3D human ear modelling with parameterization technique and variation analysis
Published in Ergonomics, 2023
Fang Fu, Ameersing Luximon, Yan Luximon
The external ear, also named the auricle, is structured with auricular cartilage and covered by a layer of thin skin (Alvord and Farmer 1997). It comprises the helix, antihelix, triangular fossa, scaphoid fossa, tragus, anti-tragus, concha and earlobe (Jahn, Santos-Sacchi, and Santo-Sacchi 2001). Ear anthropometry can provide scientific references for wearable product design, personal recognition, and other medical applications based on anatomical features. Nevertheless, the traditional measuring method was mainly used to acquire ear dimensions in previous studies (Chen et al. 2015; Kalcioglu et al. 2003; Meijerman, Van Der Lugt, and Maat 2007; Oleson 2014), which have less accuracy and information than the 3D anthropometric method.