Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe the relationship of amplitude and frequency of a sound wave to attributes of soundTrace the path of sound through the auditory system to the site of transduction of soundIdentify the structures of the vestibular system that respond to gravity

An advanced course covering anatomical, physiological, behavioral, and computational studies of the central nervous system relevant to speech and hearing. Students learn primarily by discussions of scientific papers on topics of current interest. Recent topics include cell types and neural circuits in the auditory brainstem, organization and processing in the auditory cortex, auditory reflexes and descending systems, functional imaging of the human auditory system, quantitative methods for relating neural responses to behavior, speech motor control, cortical representation of language, and auditory learning in songbirds.

Evidence-based clinical aspects of audiologic identification, assessment, intervention, and prevention of hearing impairments relevant to the practice of speech-language pathology; strategies for working with individuals and their families across the lifespan; culturally and linguistically appropriate practice.

Students continue their exploration of the human senses and their engineering counterparts, focusing on the auditory sense. Working in small groups, students design, create and run programs to control the motion of LEGO® TaskBots. By doing this, they increase their understanding of the use and function of sound sensors, gain experience writing robot programs, and reinforce their understanding of the sensory process.

Students gain a deeper understanding of how sound sensors work through a hands-on design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT taskbots and sound sensors. Student groups each program a robot computer to use to the sound of hand claps to control the robot's movement. They learn programming skills and logic design in parallel. They experience how robots can take sensor input and use it to make decisions to move and turn, similar to the human sense of hearing. A PowerPoint® presentation and pre/post quizzes are provided.

Students are introduced to engineering, specifically to biomedical engineering and the engineering design process, through a short lecture and an associated hands-on activity in which they design their own medical devices for retrieving foreign bodies from the ear canal. Through the lesson, they learn the basics of ear anatomy and how ear infections occur and are treated. Besides antibiotic treatment, the most common treatment for chronic ear infections is the insertion of ear tubes to drain fluid from the middle ear space to relieve pressure on the ear drum. Medical devices for this procedure, a very common children's surgery, are limited, sometimes resulting in unnecessary complications from a simple procedure. Thus, biomedical engineers must think creatively to develop new solutions (that is, new and improved medical devices/instruments) for inserting ear tubes into the ear drum. The class learns the engineering design process from this ear tube example of a medical device design problem. In the associated activity, students explore biomedical engineering on their own by designing prototype medical devices to solve another ear problem commonly experienced by children: the lodging of a foreign body (such as a pebble, bead or popcorn kernel) in the ear canal. The activity concludes by teams sharing and verbally analyzing their devices.

Hearing is a familiar and important human sense that is a topic naturally of interest to those who are curious about human biology. This unit will enable you to relate what you read to your own sensory experiences - and indeed many of the questions asked have exactly that function. This unit will be best understood by those with some biological understanding.

Hearing allows us to perceive the world of acoustic vibrations all around us, and provides us with our most important channels of communication. This module reviews the basic mechanisms of hearing, beginning with the anatomy and physiology of the ear and a brief review of the auditory pathways up to the auditory cortex. An outline of the basic perceptual attributes of sound, including loudness, pitch, and timbre, is followed by a review of the principles of tonotopic organization, established in the cochlea. An overview of masking and frequency selectivity is followed by a review of the perception and neural mechanisms underlying spatial hearing. Finally, an overview is provided of auditory scene analysis, which tackles the important question of how the auditory system is able to make sense of the complex mixtures of sounds that are encountered in everyday acoustic environments.

Students learn about the anatomy of the ear and how the ears work as a sound sensor. Ear anatomy parts and structures are explained in detail, as well as how sound is transmitted mechanically and then electrically through them to the brain. Students use LEGO® robots with sound sensors to measure sound intensities, learning how the NXT brick (computer) converts the intensity of sound measured by the sensor input into a number that transmits to a screen. They build on their experiences from the previous activities and establish a rich understanding of the sound sensor and its relationship to the TaskBot's computer.

Students learn about how sound sensors work, reinforcing their similarities to the human sense of hearing. They look at the hearing process sound waves converted to electrical signals sent to the brain through human ear anatomy as well as sound sensors. A mini-activity, which uses LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT intelligent bricks and sound sensors gives students a chance to experiment with the sound sensors in preparation for the associated activity involving the sound sensors and taskbots. A PowerPoint® presentation explains stimulus-to-response pathways, sensor fundamentals, the unit of decibels, and details about the LEGO sound sensor, including how readings are displayed and its three modes of programming sound input. Students take pre/post quizzes and watch a short online video. This lesson and its associated activity enable students to appreciate how robots can take sensor input and use it to make decisions to via programming.

Students are provided with a rigorous background in human "sensors" (including information on the main five senses, sensor anatomies, and nervous system process) and their engineering equivalents, setting the stage for three associated activities involving sound sensors on LEGO® robots. As they learn how robots receive input from sensors, transmit signals and make decisions about how to move, students reinforce their understanding of the human body's sensory process.

This course is an introduction to the mammalian nervous system, with emphasis on the structure and function of the human brain. Topics include the function of nerve cells, sensory systems, control of movement, learning and memory, and diseases of the brain.

Students experience a simulation of echolation, using the sensory method to walk along a path while blindfolded. This relates to the issue of bycatching by fisheries, which they learned about in the associated lesson. Bycatching affects marine animals, especially dolphins, which use echolocation to identify the location of objects in the water, but have difficulty identifying nets, and thus are often caught accidentally. Students learn how echolocation works, why certain animals use it to determine the size, shape and distance of objects, and how humans can potentially take advantage of dolphins' echolocation ability when developing bycatch avoidance methods.

There is a video lecture for students to view on how our sense of hearing works (as well as the different parts of the ear), the different types of deafness, and the different types of treatment for deafness. There is an article for students to read over the controversy of cochlear implants. Students will then complete review questions over the main concepts and content presented, as well as formulate an argument either for or against cochlear implants.

This course explores the theory and practice of scientific modeling in the context of auditory and speech biophysics. Based on seminar-style discussions of the research literature, the class draws on examples from hearing and speech, and explores general, meta-theoretical issues that transcend the particular subject matter. Examples include: What is a model? What is the process of model building? What are the different approaches to modeling? What is the relationship between theory and experiment? How are models tested? What constitutes a good model?

Students learn the physical properties of sound, how it travels and how noise impacts human health—including the quality of student learning. They learn different techniques that engineers use in industry to monitor noise level exposure and then put their knowledge to work by using a smart phone noise meter app to measure the noise level at an area of interest, such as busy roadways near the school. They devise an experimental procedure to measure sound levels in their classroom, at the source of loud noise (such as a busy road or construction site), and in between. Teams collect data using smart phones/tablets, microphones and noise apps. They calculate wave properties, including frequency, wavelength and amplitude. A PowerPoint® presentation, three worksheets and a quiz are provided.

This video segment follows neurophysiologist Allen Counter as he studies an epidemic of hearing loss in Moriussaq, Greenland, one of the quietest places on Earth. Footage from NOVA: "Mystery of the Senses: Hearing."