Audition and Vestibular Sense

In this chapter, the fundamentals of the anatomy and physiology of the human auditory and vestibular systems will be covered briefly. The focus of this chapter will be to outline the wide range of measurements that can be made and the appropriate tests that can be performed to measure the integrity of the neurophysiology associated with audition and vestibular function. The disorders of these systems will be characterized in these terms. Auditory anatomy, physiology, transduction, impedance matching qualities, and information theories will be covered in Section 14.1 while the vestibular system (part of the bony labyrinth) will be covered in Section 14.2. The neuroanatomical pathways for both systems are reviewed, focusing on techniques for measuring the various reflexes, the cortical and brainstem responses, and typical clinical tests.