The Conversation: Hearing and Speaking
The Conversation: Hearing and Speaking
By Michele Owens
Although most of us take our ears for granted, the information that comes in through them goes a long way toward making us human. Even in the womb, we're eavesdropping on the world around us, and, from the first day of life, we prefer the sounds of the language we've heard our parents speak to an unfamiliar tongue. Our alertness as babies to the sounds of familiar words turns us into the facile communicators we'll be as toddlers. As adults, we need to hear ourselves to speak properly, and we often struggle in a world full of mechanical noise simply to listen to the words of the person sitting across from us.
It is the auditory system that makes possible the great conversation that is human life—and that system is almost fantastically intricate, involving not just our ears but a number of highly specialized brain structures whose functions scientists are only beginning to understand. Throughout Boston University, researchers are doing pioneering work to illuminate the ways in which we turn the universe of sound into an intelligible map of information and ideas.
- Language Acquisition Before “Mama” and “Dada”Leher Singh, assistant professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences at Boston University's Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, studies language acquisition at its very earliest stages and quickly points out the irony of the way her target population is labeled: “Infant,” she explains, “comes from infans, which is a Latin term for 'without language.'”
- Three Dimensions from Two EarsIf language is an extremely complex system, hearing is another. H. Steven Colburn, professor of biomedical engineering and director of BU's Hearing Research Center, emphasizes, “Even putting aside the biology and just trying to solve it from a pure engineering standpoint, the interpretation of sound is a messy problem.”
- Eavesdropping on the Conversations Between NeuronsHerbert Voigt, professor of biomedical engineering, also studies the ways in which our brain localizes sound. However, his interest lies in a part of the brain that interprets sound when our binaural hearing offers no clues, because the sound is equidistant from both ears in the medial plane either overhead or beneath us.
- To Speak, We Have to HearMelanie Matthies, associate professor in Sargent College's Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences and associate dean for undergraduate programs at Sargent, focuses on the relationship between hearing and speech.
