Importance of hearing.
5 11 2010Importance of hearing. Alfred Tomatis and Much Ado About Nothing.
In the next lines I expose the analisys of Alfred Tomatis, an important scientific, who underlined the importance of hearing. Hearing not only gives us information coming through a determinate message but also shapes our life. This is the principle of this frech doctor, that through the ear the reality comes to us, and through the ear my soul, my psychology and therfore my life and even my body are being transformed.
In fact, by using psychological mind games, that is by hearing, Benedick and Beatrice are convinced that they are in love with each other. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/13284/use_of_language_in_shakespeares_much.html?cat=38 Much of the plot is moved along by characters eavesdropping on a conversation and either misunderstanding what they overhear or being deceived by gossip or by a trick. Hero, Claudio, and the rest trick Benedick and Beatrice by setting them up to overhear conversations in which their friends deliberately mislead them. Hearing plays a crucial role in Much Ado About Nothing.
That is why , as a way of going deeper in this analisys of the important role of hearing , I expose here the main scientific ideas of Alfred Tomatis. This theory in an interdisciplinar paper can give us a clearer comprehension of the “loving by hearsay” phenomenon.
Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis is a French ear, nose, and throat doctor who made astonishing medical and psychological discoveries that led to audio-psycho-phonology, or the Tomatis method. Also called “auditory training”, “auditory stimulation”, and “listening therapy”, the purpose of this treatment is to reeducate the way we listen, and it is used in over two hundred and fifty centers around the world. (http://www.tomatis.com/overview.html)
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/psychology/health_psychology/TOMATIS.html#INTRODUCTION
Tomatis came to believe that the ear was much more than an organ of hearing. It is, he maintained in charge of functions including; energizing and regulating the brains state of alertness and attention; coordinating posture and movement; and connecting our intentions and thoughts with our physical and verbal transactions upon our environment. Tomatis’s life mission eventually became the understanding of how the ear was physiologically involved in acquiring and controlling of the voice and language. To this end he invented several technologies, which could be used to rehabilitate the ear related functions of alertness, attention, coordination and voice.
The ear has three basic functions.
1.The first is the most obvious, the filtration and analysis of sound by a part of the ear called the cochlea. This function consists of two parts: hearing and listening. Hearing is a passive process and we have limited abilities to improve it. Listening, however, is the ear’s primary function. When the sensations are running smoothly, one can easily process and filter sound. (http://www.tomatis.com/overview.html) Events such as emotional stress, poor sensory stimulation and communication models, or unpleasant childhood experiences can encourage a more selective listening process and reduce the desire to listen at all.
2.The second function is the establishment of spatial dynamic, produced by the vestibular portion of the inner ear. The inner ear, or vestibule and cochlea, is linked to each other and the brain, almost all cranial nerves are somehow connected to the acoustic nerves. Through its strong influence on the fight against gravity and motion detection, the inner ear controls balance equilibrium, coordination, and muscle tone.
(http://www.tomatis.com/adresses.toronto.html)
3.The third and most controversial function is the charging or recharging of brain. and in turn the body with electric potential. A “vibration sensor” within the ear sends this electric message to the brain to give both it and the body energy. When this nuerocharge is combined with the sounds filtered and produced by the cochlea, 90% of the total body’s charge can be accounted for by the inner ear. This charge is what sends messages to our joints, bones, and muscles and provides us with energy to think, create, and move It is created by high frequency sounds fond in Mozart and Gregorian chants. Low frequency sounds that come from rock or rap music make our bodies move to exhaustion, eventually draining energy from the brain. (http://www.tomatis.com/overview.html)
The inner ear, or vestibular-cochlear system, is one of the first sensory systems to develop in the fetus. By the fifth month it is fully developed and sending message to the rest of the nervous system. Early stimulation is vital to the portal central nervous system. This stimulation is caused by high frequency sounds. Low frequency sounds, such as heartbeat, breathing and visceral noises are filtered out by the amniotic fluid. (http://www.tomatis.net/Tomatis_tomatis.html) Therefore, the most dominating sound the developing fetus hears is the high frequency sound of the mother’s voice through bone conduction. Observations concur with Dr. Tomati’s hypothesis that this voice plays an important role on the developing sensory system of a fetus. Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound; there are fifty phonemes that create all language. By the seventh month of development, a fetus has a specific, spontaneous muscular response to each phoneme the mother’s voice produces. This fascinating sensory-motor response can be inhibited by lack of or abnormal stimulation, causing the central nervous system to have difficulties perceiving and processing information.
(http://www.tomatis.net/Tomatis_tomatis.html)
Another possible cause of disorders, learning disabilities, and depression is left ear dominance. Most people are surprised to learn we have a dominant ear, which controls the opposite side of the body (very similar to the brain). People who are right ear dominant have an advantage because the right ear processes much faster. They have more control over the parameter of their voice and speech. A study by two psychologists concluded that those with right ear dominance related to situations faster, responded to stimuli more appropriately, and had better control over their emotions. Those who had a dominant left ear tended to be more introverted and had less control over their responses to situations. The Tomatis method of auditory training claims to train the right ear to become dominant. (http://www.tomatis.com/overview.html)
The role of psychology in our hearing and the psychological implications of the whole hearing process have been explored in depth by the French ear doctor, Alfred Tomatis, over the past fifty years. Tomatis distinguished between hearing as a passive process and listening as a conscious, volitional act. We are capable of tuning out our listening or of focusing it on a subject that interests us. The ear is directed by the mind, and without this direction it does not function.
Both the physical and psychological aspects of hearing begin earlier than we may think.Hearing is our means of verbal communication and thus it is the foundation upon which human relationships are built. The first of these relationships is always the relationship with the mother, which begins in the womb. Dr Alfred Tomatis was one of the first to investigate the auditory environment of the foetus. His theory was that the auditory relationship between baby and mother lays the foundation for all our other relationships and is therefore the crucial point of intervention to bring about change in the person’s psychological response to sound and language.Dr Tomatis speaks of ‘the opening of the ear’, an occurrence which happens on the combined physical and psychological levels. It can be gradual or sudden, dramatic or almost imperceptible. It means that the ear has regained its natural, full responsiveness to sound. The degree of noticeable effect depends on the degree to which the ear was closed off to sound. It also means that the psyche has adjusted and opened its receptivity to sound and that early psycho-accoustic traumas have been released.
http://www.soundtherapyinternational.com/v3/the-psychology-of-hearing.html
Tags : First Paper, Hearing, Much Ado About Nothing
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