Title: The External Ear
Course: 14SP-HIS-125-GWA1-HEARING & AUDITORY DISORDERS > Section: Lessons

As a refresher, I wanted to pull out some important information from other sources other than from the reading material in your textbooks.  As you will recall in Zemlin's Fourth Edition of Speech and Hearing Science, Anatomy and Physiology, pages 437 and 438, there are very helpful diagrams of the outer and middle ear systems.  We will focus on the outer ear for now, moving on to review the middle and inner ear a little later.

Auricle, Latin for aural,  is the most proper anatomical term for for the outer ear. Pinna is a Latin term for wing, or the projecting part of the ear lying on the side of the head. Whether we have been gifted with small ears or larger ears, the sensitivity of hearing is about the same although the contributions that the auricle make can be somewhat different. The surface of the auricle is uneven and filled with pits, grooves and depressions.  The deepest is called the concha, while the rimlike periphery of the auricle is known as the helix.

See Figure 1-1 on page 2 of Jerry Northern's Hearing Disorders book for the anatomical diagram of the Auricle.

Also, below is the Anatomical Diagram provided for you in the Martin and Clark Introduction to Audiology website.