A Passive Cochlear Model

Initializing live version
Download to Desktop

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System

Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.

The cochlea, the part of the inner ear responsible for hearing, consists of a fluid-filled tube and two membranes. This Demonstration models the cochlea by a partial differential equation (specifically, a spatially varying wave equation). The plot shows the spatiotemporal pattern generated when the left boundary is driven sinusoidally at various frequencies. The cochlea performs a frequency-to-space transformation: as the input frequency increases, the position at which the wave cuts off moves to the left. You can change the input frequency, transmission loss, impedance, spatial scaling constant (" scale"), the time for which simulation will be carried out, and the number of points to plot in space and time (" points" and " points", respectively).

Contributed by: Soumyajit Mandal (July 2008)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA


Snapshots


Details

This Demonstration was created during the New Kind of Science Summer School 2008 (NKS|Online) in Burlington, Vermont.



Feedback (field required)
Email (field required) Name
Occupation Organization
Note: Your message & contact information may be shared with the author of any specific Demonstration for which you give feedback.
Send