Visual Ear Demonstrates How The Cochlea Works

The cochlea is key to human hearing, and it plays an important role in our understanding of complex frequency content. The Visual Ear project aims to illustrate the cochlear mechanism as an educational tool.

The cochlea itself is the part of the ear that converts the pressure waves of sound into electrical signals for the brain. Different auditory frequencies excite different parts of the cochlea. The cells in the different parts of the cochlea then send signals to the brain corresponding to the sound it has picked up.

The Visual Ear demonstrates similar behavior on a strip of addressable LEDs. Lower LEDs coded in the red part of the color spectrum respond to low frequency audio. Higher LEDs step through yellow, green, and up to blue, and respond to the higher frequencies in turn. This is achieved at a high response rate with the use of a Teensy 4.0 running a Fast Fourier Transform on incoming audio, and then outputting signals to run a string of WS2812B LEDs. The result is a visual band display of 104 bands spanning 43 Hz up to 16,744 Hz, which covers most but not all of the human range of hearing.

It’s an impressive display, and one that makes a great music visualizer, too. When teaching the physics of human hearing and the cochlea, we can imagine such a tool would be quite useful.

13 thoughts on “Visual Ear Demonstrates How The Cochlea Works

  1. I feel this is way too much Lewin for a Day. As of posting this, more than half of the articles on the homepage are Lewin Day’s.

    Rather than lots of small mediocre articles I would prefer to see a few articles with more effort put into them. Personally Lewin’s writing style doesn’t jell with me and I tend to skip them, which starts to be problem when all articles are Lewin’s…

    1. This is hackaday. If you have a problem, hack up a solution. You can write a script that will use AI to rewrite his articles in whichever style you like, and you can make it into a browser plug-in that replaces Lewin’s articles with your corrected versions for you.

      I’m sure Lewin would even feature it for you.

      1. I tried it out.

        My prompt: “Rewrite the following article in the style of Brian Benchoff, but make it longer…”

        The Result: “Hey there folks, Brian Benchoff here, and today we’re talking about a truly fascinating project that has just come to our attention: the Visual Ear. This project aims to create an educational tool that helps illustrate the cochlear mechanism, which is key to human hearing and plays a crucial role in our understanding of complex frequency content.

        So, what exactly is the cochlear? Well, in simple terms, it is the part of the ear that converts the pressure waves of sound into electrical signals that are then transmitted to the brain. It’s a complex structure made up of various components, but for the purposes of this discussion, we’ll focus on the fact that different auditory frequencies excite different parts of the cochlea, which in turn sends signals to the brain corresponding to the sound it has picked up.

        The Visual Ear project seeks to replicate this behavior on a strip of addressable LEDs. Essentially, the lower LEDs, coded in the red part of the color spectrum, respond to low frequency audio, while the higher LEDs step through yellow, green, and up to blue, responding to higher frequencies in turn. This is achieved at a high response rate with the use of a Teensy 4.0 microcontroller running a Fast Fourier Transform on incoming audio, and then outputting signals to run a string of WS2812B LEDs.

        The result of this innovative approach is a visual band display of 104 bands spanning 43 Hz up to 16,744 Hz, which covers most but not all of the human range of hearing. It’s truly an impressive display and one that could potentially serve as an excellent music visualizer as well.

        But beyond its cool factor, the Visual Ear has real educational value, particularly when it comes to teaching the physics of human hearing and the cochlear. By providing a tangible, visual representation of how the cochlear mechanism works, students can better understand the complexities of this vital aspect of our hearing system.

        Overall, the Visual Ear project is a fantastic example of how technology can be used to enhance education and deepen our understanding of the world around us. We’re excited to see how this project evolves in the future and how it can be used to benefit students and educators alike.”

        1. I don’t think Brian started his articles with “Hey there folks, Brian Benchoff here”, but hey that’s not bad at all. Nice hack!

          What’s the Tucker Carlson version like?

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