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A revolutionary discovery of "alternative hearing" has been made by American scientists
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
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As scientists from the Naval Underwater Medical Research Laboratory in Connecticut have discovered, the human ear underwater is capable of hearing frequencies up to 100 kHz, which is beyond the normal hearing range. This is due to the direct excitation of the auditory ossicles by sound vibrations, without the involvement of the eardrum.
The human ear typically perceives sounds with frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. Anything above that is heard as a progressively less noticeable squeak, similar to a mosquito; sounds at the lower end are like standing next to the bass at an R&B concert. But under certain conditions, humans are able to hear and distinguish sounds beyond this range.
In a normal case, a sound wave propagating in air or water reaches the eardrum and makes it vibrate. The eardrum is connected to a system of three auditory ossicles: the malleus, the incus, and the stapes. The vibrations of the stapes excite another element of the hearing system - the cochlea. This spiral-shaped organ has a fairly complex structure, is filled with liquid, and contains hair cells. The hairs, having caught the vibrations of the liquid transmitted from the stapes, transform them into a nerve impulse.
But, as one of the study's authors, Michael Keane, argues, this is not the only way to create an auditory nerve impulse.
Vibrations can reach the hairs of the sensitive cells of the cochlea without vibrating the eardrum. High frequencies, bypassing the bones of the skull, "swing" the auditory ossicles themselves. Some species of whales hear in this way. The eardrum does not keep up with high frequencies, and in the air they are too weak to act directly on the auditory ossicles: it is known that divers under water can hear ultra-high sounds up to a hundred kilohertz.
As an alternative mechanism, the researchers propose the ability of some high-frequency vibrations to directly excite the lymph inside the cochlea, bypassing even the auditory ossicles.
Keane and his colleagues are still evading the question of whether the discovery of "alternative hearing" will have any medical applications and whether it will be possible to improve human hearing on the basis of such a mechanism, creating a "super ear". Now, as the scientists say, they want to find out the details of such transmission of sound vibrations, in particular, to understand which of the auditory ossicles performs the functions of the main antenna here."