Inner ear
innermost part of the vertebrate ear
The inner ear (internal ear, auris interna) is the innermost part of the vertebrate ear. In vertebrates, the inner ear is mainly responsible for sound detection and balance. In mammals, it consists of the bony labyrinth, a hollow cavity in the temporal bone of the skull with a system of passages comprising two main functional parts:
The cochlea, dedicated to hearing; converting sound pressure patterns from the outer ear into electrochemical impulses which are passed on to the brain via the auditory nerve.
The vestibular system, dedicated to balance.
The inner ear is found in all vertebrates, with substantial variations in form and function. The inner ear is innervated by the eighth cranial nerve in all vertebrates.
Structure
The labyrinth can be divided by layer or by region.
Bony and membranous labyrinths
The bony labyrinth, or osseous labyrinth, is the network of passages with bony walls lined with periosteum. The three major parts of the bony labyrinth are the vestibule of the ear, the semicircular canals, and the cochlea. The membranous labyrinth runs inside of the bony labyrinth, and creates three parallel fluid filled spaces.
“Inner ear” enters the record as innermost part of the vertebrate ear. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Inner, innermost and part can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Inner ear” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Inner, innermost and part provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q212344. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Inner ear” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.