Fly on a treadmill demonstrates super direction...( age between the fly's closely spaced ea...)

age between the fly's closely spaced eardrums as something like a playground teeter-totter, an earlier discovery made in collaboration with postdoctoral researcher Robert and Binghamton University engineer Ronald Miles. Sound waves cause each fly eardrum to beat out of phase with the other.

"The near ear, the one closest to the sound source, responds more vigorously, compared to the far ear, " Hoy explains. Then the fly's nervous system (its fused neural ganglia and a tiny brain) instantaneously calculates the difference in pressure between the two ears and signals the fly's muscles to respond to the sound source. With human ears about 6 inches apart, we have about 10 microseconds to make the same calculation that the Ormia fly, with its half-millimeter head, makes in about 50 nanoseconds -- a thousand times faster. Trying to mimic the Ormia ear in silicon, the Cornell and Binghamton University engineering groups so far have developed prototype "microphone eardrums" that function "Ormia -like" as predicted but at ultrasonic frequencies. "This might make a good hearing aid for a bat," Hoy notes, "but we need a device that responds to critical frequencies in the human hearing range, especially in speech -- and one that will be highly directional, fit inside the ear canal and be affordable." Other applications of the bio-inspired silicon ear might be in robotic listening devices, he suggests.

"I've been doing basic biological studies of insect hearing systems for over 20 years, and this work [with the Ormia ear] is the first to have a potential application," he says, acknowledging grants from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). "We have a lot to learn from creatures in the natural world. They have been working on difficult problems much longer than we have."

Commenting on work of the Hoy laboratory, NIDCD Director James Battey Jr. said: "Individuals who use hearing aids often s
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Contact: Roger Segelken
hrs2@cornell.edu
607-255-9736
Cornell University News Service
4-Apr-2001

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