Ultrasonic hearing is a recognised auditory effect which allows humans to perceive sounds of a much higher

frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from ''angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is eq ...

than would ordinarily be audible using the inner ear, usually by stimulation of the base of the

cochlea The cochlea is the part of the inner ear involved in hearing. It is a spiral-shaped cavity in the bony labyrinth, in humans making 2.75 turns around its axis, the modiolus. A core component of the cochlea is the Organ of Corti, the sensory or ...

through

bone conduction Bone conduction is the conduction of sound to the inner ear primarily through the bones of the skull, allowing the hearer to perceive audio content without blocking the ear canal. Bone conduction transmission occurs constantly as sound waves vibra ...

. Normal human hearing is recognised as having an upper bound of 15–28 kHz, depending on the person.

Ultrasonic Ultrasound is sound waves with frequencies higher than the upper audible limit of human hearing. Ultrasound is not different from "normal" (audible) sound in its physical properties, except that humans cannot hear it. This limit varies fr ...

sinusoids as high as 120 kHz have been reported as successfully perceived. Two competing theories are proposed to explain this effect. The first asserts that ultrasonic sounds excite the inner hair cells of the cochlea basal turn, which are responsive to high frequency sounds. The second proposes that ultrasonic signals resonate the brain and are

modulated In electronics and telecommunications, modulation is the process of varying one or more properties of a periodic waveform, called the ''carrier signal'', with a separate signal called the ''modulation signal'' that typically contains informatio ...

down to frequencies that the cochlea can then detect. Researchers Tsutomu Oohashi et al. have coined the term hypersonic effect to describe the results of their controversial study supporting audibility of ultrasonics.T. Oohashi, E. Nishina, M. Honda, Y. Yonekura, Y. Fuwamoto, N. Kawai, T. Maekawa, S. Nakamura, H. Fukuyama, and H. Shibasaki
Inaudible high-frequency sounds affect brain activity: Hypersonic effect.
Journal of Neurophysiology, 83(6):3548–3558, 2000. By modulating speech signals onto an ultrasonic carrier, intelligible speech has also been perceived with a high degree of clarity, especially in areas of high ambient noise. Deatherage states that what humans experience as ultrasonic perception may have been a necessary precursor in the

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

of echolocation in

marine mammal Marine mammals are aquatic mammals that rely on the ocean and other marine ecosystems for their existence. They include animals such as seals, whales, manatees, sea otters and polar bears. They are an informal group, unified only by their ...

References

Ultrasound {{biology-stub

See also

References