Hearing

Handbook of Perception, Volume IV: Hearing reviews the literature on the physical, physiological, and psychological aspects of hearing. The book covers a wide array of topics relevant to hearing, including the measurement and biophysics of the cochlea, binaural and spatial hearing, and the effects of hearing impairment on the auditory system. The psychological, sociological, and physiological effects of noise are also addressed. This volume is organized into six sections encompassing 16 chapters and begins with a historical overview of the history of research on hearing, from the antiquity of acoustics to the physical and mathematical developments that gave rise to auditory facts and theories. Auditory perception, physiology, and theory are followed up to about 1940, whereas the work on analysis synthesis and perception of speech is traced up to about 1960. The chapters that follow focus on measurement, the biophysics of the cochlea, and neural coding. The underlying mechanisms of the processing of acoustic information are given consideration. The book methodically introduces the reader to the mechanisms of frequency, intensity, time, and periodicity, along with stress, trauma, and pathology. A chapter on the transient physiological effects of noise and their relation to neuroendocrine stress theory concludes the treatise. This book is intended for psychologists, biologists, and natural scientists, as well as for those who are interested in the physical, physiological, and psychological aspects of hearing.