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Science journalist Sally Adee breaks open the field of bioelectricity—the electric currents that run through our bodies and every living thing—its misunderstood history, and why new discoveries will lead to new ways around antibiotic resistance, cleared arteries, and new ways to combat cancer. You may be familiar with the idea of our body's biome: the bacterial fauna that populate our gut and can so profoundly affect our health. In We Are Electric we cross into new scientific understanding: discovering your body's electrome. Every cell in our bodies—bones, skin, nerves, muscle—has a voltage, like a tiny battery. It is the reason our brain can send signals to the rest of our body, how we develop in the womb, and why our body knows to heal itself from injury. When bioelectricity goes awry, illness, deformity, and cancer can result. But if we can control or correct this bioelectricity, the implications for our health are remarkable: an undo switch for cancer that could flip malignant cells back into healthy ones; the ability to regenerate cells, organs, even limbs; to slow aging and so much more. The next scientific frontier might be decrypting the bioelectric code, much the way we did the genetic code. Yet the field is still emerging from two centuries of skepticism and entanglement with medical quackery, all stemming from an 18th-century scientific war about the nature of electricity between Luigi Galvani (father of bioelectricity, famous for shocking frogs) and Alessandro Volta (inventor of the battery). In We Are Electric, award-winning science writer Sally Adee takes readers through the thrilling history of bioelectricity and into the future: from the Victorian medical charlatans claiming to use electricity to cure everything from paralysis to diarrhea, to the advances helped along by the giant axons of squids, and finally to the brain implants and electric drugs that await us—and the moral implications therein. The bioelectric revolution starts here.

Welche Bedeutung hat die Elektrizität für das Leben, insbesondere für das menschliche? Welche Rolle spielt sie für die Zellen, den Körper und seine Funktionen, für das Denken und Handeln der Menschen? Der Physiker Günter Nimtz erläutert in seinem Buch kompakt und leicht verständlich, welche Bedeutung die Elektrizität für biologische Prozesse und damit für das Leben hat.Zusammenhänge zwischen elektrischen Strömen und Lebensfunktionen wurden schon früh entdeckt. So erkannte der italienische Anatomieprofessor Luigi Galvani um das Jahr 1780 durch seine sensationellen Untersuchungen, dass elektrischer Strom Froschschenkel bewegt. Heute ist bekannt, dass die elektromagnetische Kraft und seine Wechselwirkung Ionen, Atome, Moleküle und chemische Reaktionen beherrschen. Alle lebenswichtigen Prozesse fußen auf elektrischen Signalen und deren Übertragung. Verhaltensweisen von primitivem Leben bis zu dem der Menschen erfolgen durch elektrische Impulse. Gedankenabläufe sind als elektrische Vorgänge nachweisbar.Der Autor führt kurzweilig in die physikalischen Konzepte ein und veranschaulicht an vielen Beispielen, wie Elektrizität Leben ermöglicht – von der einzelnen Körperzelle bis hin zu Funktionen des Gehirns. Damit richtet sich das Buch an alle, die sich für naturwissenschaftliche, biologische und physikalische Hintergründe des Lebens interessieren.

This book explains neural function at the level of ion channels and membrane excitability in neurons along the ascending auditory pathway. Airborne sound information is captured by the ears, transformed to neural electrical signals, and then processed in the brain. Readers will find full descriptions of these processes of signal transduction and transformation. First, it is described how, at the level of hair cells, the receptor cells in the cochlea, the sound-evoked vibration is transduced to electrical signals and transmitted to the auditory nerve fibers. In the second section it is explained how the electrical activity of these fibers is processed at the cochlear nucleus in order to extract the temporal and level information of sound separately and then transmitted to the third nucleus for processing of the interaural differences, such as the interaural time difference and the interaural level difference. The third section summarizes the transformation of auditory temporal information to the rate of neural firing activity in the midbrain and the higher nuclei, including the cortex, based on in vivo results. Finally, emerging new technologies to investigate auditory signal processing are reviewed and discussed.

Welche Bedeutung hat die Elektrizität für das Leben, insbesondere für das menschliche? Welche Rolle spielt sie für die Zellen, den Körper und seine Funktionen, für das Denken und Handeln der Menschen? Der Physiker Günter Nimtz erläutert in seinem Buch kompakt und leicht verständlich, welche Bedeutung die Elektrizität für biologische Prozesse und damit für das Leben hat.Zusammenhänge zwischen elektrischen Strömen und Lebensfunktionen wurden schon früh entdeckt. So erkannte der italienische Anatomieprofessor Luigi Galvani um das Jahr 1780 durch seine sensationellen Untersuchungen, dass elektrischer Strom Froschschenkel bewegt. Heute ist bekannt, dass die elektromagnetische Kraft und seine Wechselwirkung Ionen, Atome, Moleküle und chemische Reaktionen beherrschen. Alle lebenswichtigen Prozesse fußen auf elektrischen Signalen und deren Übertragung. Verhaltensweisen von primitivem Leben bis zu dem der Menschen erfolgen durch elektrische Impulse. Gedankenabläufe sind als elektrische Vorgänge nachweisbar.Der Autor führt kurzweilig in die physikalischen Konzepte ein und veranschaulicht an vielen Beispielen, wie Elektrizität Leben ermöglicht – von der einzelnen Körperzelle bis hin zu Funktionen des Gehirns. Damit richtet sich das Buch an alle, die sich für naturwissenschaftliche, biologische und physikalische Hintergründe des Lebens interessieren.

The book presents a new, powerful model of neuronal networks, consisting of a three-dimensional neuronal culture in which 3D neuronal networks are coupled to micro-electrode-arrays (MEAs). It discusses the main advantages of the three-dimensional system compared to its two-dimensional counterpart, and shows that the network dynamics, recorded during both spontaneous and stimulated activity, differs between the two models, with the 3D system being better able to emulate the in vivo behaviour of neural networks. The book offers an extensive analysis of the system, from the theoretical background, to its design and applications in neuro-pharmacological studies. Moreover, it includes a concise yet comprehensive introduction to both 2D and 3D neuronal networks coupled to MEAs, and discusses the advantages, limitations and challenges of their applications as cellular and tissue-like in vitro experimental model systems.

This thesis reports on a novel system for extracellular recordings of the activity of excitable cells, which relies on an organic, charge-modulated field-effect transistor (FET) called OCMFET. The book shows how, thanks to the intrinsic biocompatibility, lightness, and inexpensiveness of the material used, this new system is able to overcome several problems typical of of “classic” electronic and bioelectronic. It provides a full description of the system, together with a comprehensive report of the successful experimental trials carried out on both cardiac and nerve cells, and a concise yet comprehensive overview of bioelectronic interfaces and organic sensors for electrophysiological applications.

This book is dedicated to the channels and pores that belong to an eclectic and ubiquitous class of unconventional - perhaps at times strange - pore-forming molecules, which nevertheless play fundamental roles in various organisms. These non-canonical channels may take on various and sometimes complex architectures, such as large beta-barrels or lipid-containing pores. They may originate from bacteria, viruses or intracellular organelles. For some of them, the physiologically relevant substrate may indeed be ions, and for others folded polypeptides. Some are released by cells in a soluble form that has the ability to insert into biological membranes to exert its permeabilizing effect. Many of these unconventional pores have been investigated by electrophysiology, which, by its virtue of focusing on a few or even a single unit, has provided invaluable insight into the mechanisms and structure-function relationships of these remarkable membrane entities. The chapters of this book highlight a representative set of these interesting investigations.

This volume describes chemical approaches to assess ion channel structure, function and pharmacology. Topics discussed include the use of engineered ionizable side chains to obtain information on permeation pathways and the local environment; the modification of engineered cysteine side chains, including cysteine scanning mutagenesis and the attachment of fluorescent probes and bio-reactive tethers; and the nascent use of genetic code expansion, evaluating its applications to ion channel and membrane proteins. This comprehensive text provides multifaceted perspectives on the great diversity of state-of-the-art methods which take advantage of the ever-expanding chemical toolbox to study ion channel biology.Capturing the contributions and innovations of renowned laboratory researchers in transmembrane protein study for the first time, this book is comprehensive in scope. It covers a wide array of experimental approaches: photochemistry, novel biological tools, and innovative spectroscopy, all combined with traditional techniques of electrophysiology and molecular biology. Novel Chemical Tools to Study Ion Channel Biology, part of the bestselling Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology series is ideal for researchers and advanced students interested in biochemistry, biophysics, fluorometry, electrophysiology, and chemical biology..​

In 1961, neurobiologists found that the conduction velocity of the nerve impulse in the giant nerve fiber of the Penaeus shrimp abdominal nerve cord was over 200 m/s, the highest speed of information transmission ever observed in the animal kingdom. The peculiar myelin sheath with its unique nodal structure and the electrical properties of the nerve fibers of the shrimp have continued to be investigated for a quarter of century and are now fully described in this book. The investigation dispels the commonly held belief that the fastest recorded impulse conduction is about 120 m/s in the thickest vertebrate myelinated nerve fibers. In the shrimp, researchers found a completely novel type of functional node in the giant fiber which they designated as the fenestration node. In portions of the myelinated fiber, the fenestration node furnished the sites of excitation. Also discovered was a new strategy for increasing impulse conduction in the shrimp. The book includes a section on the formation of the fenestration node and the discovery of a strategy that allows the shrimp to escape its predators by an action of the fastest velocity. The data presented in this volume on the myelin sheath of invertebrates present a new direction for this field and a rich source of information for neurobiologists worldwide.

Recent advances in technology have led to the unprecedented accuracy in measurements of endogenous electric fields around sites of tissue disruption. State-of-the-art molecular approaches demonstrate the role of bioelectricity in the directionality and speed of cell migration, proliferation, apoptosis, differentiation, and orientation. New informat

Understanding of memory and learning is one of the major goals of neuroscientists and psychologists. The author first introduces the reader into the current state of knowledge of the mechanisms underlying memory by providing extensive reviews of contemporary results including behavioural approaches and molecular studies. He presents results of his group obtained by analysing elec- trical activity - including single neuron meassures. As a major experimental model the phenomenon of hippocampal long- term potentiation was studied. The so-called quantal analy- sis - a quantitative method - was applied to study mammalian brain plasticity. Short- and long-term synaptic plasticities were registered both in vivo and in vitro mammalian brain preparations. Results show the involvement of mainly presynaptic location in memory, however, the possible involvement of postsynaptic mechanisms is indicated by changes in quantal amplitude as shown by the author.