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Our nerves work by sound, not electricity?!
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Segata Sanshiro
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That's a really interesting theory. Be interesting to see how it works out in the long run.
That is so much bullshit. If this is the case, then why does Functional Electrical Stimulation work? Hell, electrical impulse propagation has been established since Galvani in 1766.
Who the **** are these people?
Who the **** are these people?
OpinionatedCyborg
Member
That theory's a bit Crichton-esque...
The article is nonsense. The actual research says nothing of the sort. SA discussed it a bit earlier.
This was posted on Slashdot a little while ago and generally got pounded, with some neuroscientists stepping in for good measure.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/10/0328217
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/10/0328217
Teknopathetic
Member
I think what he's implying (and this thought crossed my mind as well) is that you'd think that loud (as in really loud concert or stereo or whatever) would cause (via vibrations through our body) our nervous system to go berserk, because electricity does.
Armitage said:
Thanks for the link.
To summarize: The headline is bullshit (lolz Canadian press), the reporter didn't even contact the person who did the paper before publishing the article to make sure they understood it.
The paper/theory was printed in a respected publication (PNAS), but was allowed to bypass peer review (?!).
Honestly, I just saw the link on another site and thought it made for an interesting topic. I never realized I would get personally attacked by a moderator so he could springboard his other greivances against me. I'm a bit shaken up now.
Bullshit. (edit: Not to you Adam, but to the writers of the journal article.)
I used to work a bit in the Biomedical Engineering field (and was a potential grad student in the field before I went into nanotech) and these guys seem to forget that there is a very real electric potential across the cell membrane. Not to mention that it is not electricity that flows through our nerves, but that electrical systems are analogous to our nervous system. The real current is caused by concentration gradients of various ions (Na+, K+, etc) inside and out of the nerve/axon/pathway. It's just convenient to express it as electricity.
The same goes for organic conductors and semiconductors. They don't really "pass" electrons, but merely move exciton pairs between bonds and structures. That's why things like OLEDs used to have a short lifetime because of the accumulation of H+ ions.
Of course, that's not to say that a real electric potential can't cause a nerve to fire, because it clearly does. What it really does, though, is to mimic the effect of acetylcholine (I think?) and its receptors. While the chemical response opens up the channels to allow ions to flow through and change the potential across the membrane, the applied voltage artificially creates this difference.
I used to work a bit in the Biomedical Engineering field (and was a potential grad student in the field before I went into nanotech) and these guys seem to forget that there is a very real electric potential across the cell membrane. Not to mention that it is not electricity that flows through our nerves, but that electrical systems are analogous to our nervous system. The real current is caused by concentration gradients of various ions (Na+, K+, etc) inside and out of the nerve/axon/pathway. It's just convenient to express it as electricity.
The same goes for organic conductors and semiconductors. They don't really "pass" electrons, but merely move exciton pairs between bonds and structures. That's why things like OLEDs used to have a short lifetime because of the accumulation of H+ ions.
Of course, that's not to say that a real electric potential can't cause a nerve to fire, because it clearly does. What it really does, though, is to mimic the effect of acetylcholine (I think?) and its receptors. While the chemical response opens up the channels to allow ions to flow through and change the potential across the membrane, the applied voltage artificially creates this difference.
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