Your ears pick up sound Your ears hear sound. Sound travels in invisible waves through the air. Sound occurs when a moving or vibrating object causes the air around it to move.
Sound waves travel down the ear canal and hit the eardrum in the middle ear.
This causes the eardrum to vibrate. Three tiny bones in your middle ear link the vibrating ear drum to the cochlea in the inner ear. The cochlea is filled with liquid that carries the vibrations to thousands of tiny hair cells. The hair cells on the membrane fire off tiny electrical signals. These electrical signals travel up the cochlea nerves of the auditory pathway to the brain that processes them.