The Auditory Universe

Lecture given by Professor Alfred A. Tomatis during a seminar organised in 1976*.*

I could hardly choose a vaster subject, so true is it that the world of audition covers an infinity of planes touching the human. It is indeed of the ear that I am going to speak to you, but also of acoustics, of sounds, of speech, of language — so many springboards that will plunge us into the psyche, into thought, and into the notion of consciousness, containing in its essence the very presence of the Being. You see that the time allotted is very short; however, it seems necessary to us to limit such a subject, whose real dimensions at every moment exceed the outline that one would wish to set out.

I shall willingly begin this talk with this saying of Hermes Trismegistus, which will doubtless lose its hermeticism as our discourse unfolds. This sage qualified as Thrice Great said:

“It is sound that fabricated the ear; and, if you wish to know sound, study the ear.”

This condensed manner of envisaging the problem proves of such veracity that, after many years of investigation in this field, I come to consider this adage as a true prolegomenon to all research touching the constitutive elements of the auditory universe.

So I shall begin by speaking to you of the ear — of this ear that you all know, and whose pinna continues, by the magnificent question mark it draws, to importune all the curious avid to discover the mysteries of it. But this first interrogative approach opens upon a domain into which I should like to lead you by giving you some clarifications which will thus allow you to gain insight into the question that a good number of researchers ask themselves about the human ear.

In fact, by the initial data of their science or technique, these researchers find themselves blocked in their progression by solidly buttressed a priori notions, built on reasonings of scientific appearance. It is certainly difficult, even in wishing it, to think that the ear has wholly other functions than the one centred uniquely on audition and defining its role of sensory perception of sounds. Outside this restricted concept, an infinity of questions arises concerning the influence of the ear upon the body and the psyche.

Without entering into a theoretical study that would put in difficulty this simplistic — though this does not mean simple — vision of the ear, we shall say that the organ called “auditory apparatus” serves at least two essential functions, which are well known to zoologists.

First function: cortical charging

One of these functions, which I consider as the major function of this ensemble that begins at the tip of the ear and extends to the complex of the neuronal tree with which it is intimately interwoven, is the one which I shall call the cortical charging function, or “dynamo” effect.

It has been accepted moreover for some years with ever more conviction that the brain and the nervous system in its totality are activated by an energy whose source is not essentially metabolic, nutritional in sum. Everything concurs indeed in thinking that the stimulations coming from the periphery through the intermediary of the sense organs ensure this potentiality. It was given to us, some twenty years ago, to bring proof that the auditory organ constituted one of the most important sources of such energetisation.

Physicians are still little open to this manner of conceiving the function of the auditory apparatus, of the cochleo-vestibular sensory organ more precisely. Zoologists, by contrast, more keen on observation and less tempted to project their own perceptions onto those of the animal kingdom, have been able experimentally to verify the presence of this primordial function.

It may be summed up as follows: each time there exists a sensory cell of the type akin to those of the cells of Corti, one may be certain that the organ in which it is included operates in the manner of a dynamo ensuring charging. This is true from the simple statocyst of the medusae to the human ear, passing through the lateral line, then the otoliths of fishes, and all the gradation of more complex organisations that one knows how to distinguish at present in the different stages of the animal kingdom.

Thus the progression — or if one prefers the evolution, although these two words are most delicate to manipulate conceptually (better would be to think of the comparative study of the different “ears” corresponding to each species) — reveals to us with more precision the dynamising function of the ciliated cellular ensemble of Corti. It is moreover interesting to analyse the architectonic balance which exists between the more or less complex structure of this sensory apparatus and that of the nervous system. There exists a common organisation which it would be useful to deepen, and which could bring to light certain mechanisms still poorly known in the domain touching the finality of these two organs.

Second function: equilibration

The second function, interwoven with the first, is the one which, for the observer, corresponds to what is conventionally called equilibration. This function which ensures equilibrium requires some explanations. In general, everyone knows — or thinks he knows — what this function corresponds to. Language is full of formulas which show that such a concept is commonly widespread: to have a good equilibrium, to be in equilibrium, conversely to be unbalanced. However, when one reflects on it, one rapidly discovers that a more precise notion emerges, suggesting that this function is grounded on the awareness of the surrounding milieu. The discovery of the presence of what constitutes the outside world combines thus with the conviction ever more affirmed that the living particle, whichever it may be, exists in its inner being. From then on, dialogue is engaged, in the course of which is instituted a notion of reciprocal interactions based initially on movements and their relative play.

It is indeed to the so-called “vestibular” part of the auditory organ that this equilibration is attributed. It renders sensible all the movements that it registers at the level of two small apparatuses called utricle and saccule, the first being surmounted by its three semicircular canals. It therefore integrates every displacement of the vestibular labyrinth and, a fortiori, of the body in which this apparatus is included, relative to the environment.

The mechanism is simple: the apparatuses are filled with liquid, and the relative displacements of these latter with respect to the movement executed by the container create a response which registers the accelerations. Conversely, any mobilisation of the liquids determines a mobilisation of the body: this is the case of music, and more particularly of dance music, or the still more rousing music of military marches.

To understand better how simple impulses created on liquids included in tiny canals can have so great an influence on what is habitually called “the image of the body”, it suffices to recall that to the group of cells sensitive to these phenomena — and very close to the cells of Corti — are connected so-called vestibular nerves. The latter spread out in such a manner that all the muscles of the body without exception are under their sway. Bundles gathered at the level of the cerebellum, and doubtless on the cortex, ensure the coordination. The most important dialogue that the labyrinth regulates permanently is, in truth, that established with gravity. It is in sum from this equilibrium issuing from a kind of permanent dialectic, of every instant, that the vestibular excitation finds a great part of its energetisation, the more so as, thanks to it, are set in action the central stimuli-stations located in the muscles, in the joints notably.

Music, rhythm and acoustics

Since we have just evoked the action of music, let us specify that the latter knows how to play on the vestibular apparatus only by discontinuous action, the tempo marking the rhythm of accelerations and decelerations applied to the labyrinthine liquids. But rhythm is, in truth, only one part of the musical phrase.

Likewise in language, there is the expiration which modulates the sentence, the inspiration which punctuates it with a silence, then the resumption which thus gives the accelerations-decelerations to which we have alluded. But there is more: it remains to detect the sounds, to analyse them, to differentiate them. To prepare these different approaches, the vestibule associates with itself a complex capable of carrying out this programme.

Indeed, by its form, by its structure, what is commonly called the cochlea — or snail — proceeds to the registration of rapid movements, made up of accelerations-decelerations without intermediate plateaus between the two changes of direction of the movement. These micro-displacements are precisely those upon which the world of acoustics is built.

It is therefore necessary to know that the ear allows not only the assuring of audition as it is commonly envisaged, but also the cortical charge. And this last function is all the more effective in that the sounds, in their distribution upon the cochlear analytic apparatus, locate themselves precisely where the cells of Corti are most numerous, that is, in the part reserved for high frequencies. Thus, high sounds distributed according to a certain rhythm are beneficial. They procure a considerable charge to the cortex. This can moreover be verified with the help of electroencephalographic examinations and by the study of vigilance rates which increase in parallel.

What are the most favourable rhythms? Assuredly those which do not invite, or invite little, the body to move, but which, in return, respond electively to the physiological rhythms such as the cardiac rhythms, the ebb and flow of respiration. Without going further into the mechanisms themselves of the cochleo-vestibular auditory apparatus, one readily perceives the possibility of broadening the concept of communication and the effect of the stimulating inter-reaction of the ambient milieu.

A pedagogy of Listening

Once installed in this conception, one can readily imagine the considerable means offered by the use of sounds and rhythms on the educational plane. It is through a pedagogy of Listening that one can lead the auditory organ — including, of course, its neuronal annexes taken in their totality — to become the apparatus capable of sharpening vigilance through the dynamising effect, and, in consequence, of potentiating concentration, memorisation: so many cortical mechanisms that execute themselves all the better in that the cortex and the nervous system are highly charged in stimulations.

It is then only a matter of play to enter into verbal communication, which, on its own, brings together the rhythms, intonations, colours of the voice, the most subtle inflexions — those thousand nuances to which a trained ear knows how to respond by attentive listening.

At present, thanks to so-called audio-psycho-phonological techniques — because they use the ear, conscious psyche and language — it is easy to offer to the auditory apparatus that posture which is that of Listening — the one which totalises by itself, by a play of regulations of the musculature of the middle ear, all the conditions required for the ear to know how to adapt its opening to the greatest number of stimuli. We of course exclude non-stimulating sounds, like the low frequencies for instance, whose only effect is to bring the body to energy expenditures by movements, without ensuring for all that the equivalence of a compensatory cortical stimulation.

To be tired, to be depressed, is as a rule no longer to know how to capture these stimulations, yet so widely distributed. Numerous cases taken from psychiatric pathology bear witness to this functional imperfection and must therefore, in order to avoid following the infernal journey we all know, be directed to specialists capable of recharging their cortical potential.

This aptitude to know how to listen is, it must be admitted, particularly exceptional. And it is known that the leitmotif which makes man that famous anthropoid endowed with ears that do not — or will not — hear, stipulates with the same acuity that those who hear do not know how to listen.

I remain persuaded that the man who realises himself in his quality as a human is the one who knows how to listen: to listen to the other, to listen to himself — and thereby to monitor himself — but also to listen to the Universe which speaks to him and which reveals itself, and of which he is only the more or less faithful translator.

The Electronic Ear and the ontogenesis of Listening

The techniques developed in our field precisely allow the awakening of this exceptional function thanks to electronic complexes whose acoustic play teaches the human ear to adapt to its dynamising role — which, as has been seen, goes hand in hand with the increase of the conscious field. This last performance perfects Listening. From then on the subject integrates himself into the group.

Among the devices we use, the best known is the Electronic Ear, already operative for twenty years. By the cortical dynamisation it gives rise to, it allows the subject to take charge of himself and to increase his motivation, his desire to live and to act.

Such undertakings are realised thanks to a sonic progression which recreates the ontogenesis of listening from its uterine beginnings to the highest stage of conscious audition. For this process to be engaged, the audition is submitted first of all to acoustic environments “sensorialising” identical to those of foetal life, then, along the way, it rejoins the audition of the child, then of the adolescent, until the great listening of the outside and inside life — which is none other than the very revelation of the logos which expresses itself.

Clinical applications

So much so that these techniques of audio-psycho-phonological learning apply to every incident occurring on the function of conscious listening, whose disappearance leaves place to the depths of the unconscious. We know all the disorders that ensue: melancholy, depressive phenomena, even obsessional or delirious phenomena — representing the exclusion or alienation of the subject with respect to the social group to which he belongs.

They apply equally to the deficiencies inherent in the non-maturation of this approach to listening, whose manifestation is inscribed in the line of disorders of communication and of relation, which show themselves all the more profound as they are more precocious:

• child schizophrenia, whose origin is situated at the level of foetal life;

• autism, which concerns neonatal life;

• stammering, which expresses a linguistic fixation at an age varying from 2 to 4 years;

• dyslexia and the series of school disorders which intervene later in the relational life of the child.

The extent of these techniques, which confers on them so universal a bearing as regards the redressing of language and behavioural disorders, comes simply from the fact that they act upon the very source of the cortical mechanisms and upon the processes of energetisation of the cortical ensemble.

— Pr Alfred A. Tomatis, lecture given during a seminar in 1976.