Question: whats so interesting about ears which made you want to study them?

Hannah Brotherton answered on 20 Jun 2013:

Hi cerysgreenfield,
When I went to university I did a degree in brain science (neuroscience) and then I went on to study another course in psychology. Not once did I think about studying ears when I was at university. Its not a very ‘flashy’ subject….I mean how much is there to learn about ears. How wrong could I have been!

So the first thing that got me interested or curious was when I have been at home or somewhere quiet and a song pops into my head…..the most catchiest song that you can’t get our of your head. Then I heard a woman in America has not been able to get a song out of her head for 10 years…..10 years…..must be a good song lol. But I thought to myself, how is the brain making me hear this song in the clearest of details, just from listening to it once. This is what got me interested in the how the brain hears sounds and stores it.

Then I read that everything we hear is emotionally related…a bird song, classical music, someone shouting at you, someone crying, someone laughing. It affects your mood. And because I studied psychology I was already interested in how humans think.

So I wanted to know more and more. This is how I ended up studying not just ears but also how the brain is associated with our ears. We always forget about our ears, I mean we can’t even feel them half the time ….when can you feel your ears without touching them? 😛 I have only felt my ears in New York, when I thought they were going to fall off from the cold lol.

But ears are amazing, they have little muscles inside, a little snail structure that plots exactly which sounds you have heard onto a little map in the ear. This is then taken to the brain, where there is another map of sounds. This is how we can hear.

Just from being a bit curious about a song popping into my head got me passionate about to do a PhD in this area.

Is there a subject you are interested in?