eli5 If MRI machines a super powerful magnets, how come they do not disrupt or damage the electrical impulses in our bodies when we are scanned?
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it’s not the same kind of electricity that runs through wires.
it’s more like electrically charged atoms (ions) moving in and out of cells. There are little protein pumps and channels that allow the ions to move in and out.
If you pump a lot of positively charge ions out of a cell, then the inside becomes more negatively charged (relative to the outside). you can actually measure this tiny amount of voltage.
If you then open up channels for those positive ions, they’ll leak back in, and the voltage will change, and you can set up a chain reaction that causes other channels to open, and this opening and closing of channels will ripple down the length of the cell like a wave.
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