It is my understanding that life forms use both chemical and electrical signals to communicate. I know chemistry is elements forming compounds through electrical bonds, and therefore electrical in a sense. But just because a copper wire has electrical bonds in its chemistry that’s not the same as when a current is sent through the wire.
What I’d like to understand is how do livings organism us chemical communication and electrical communication and how are they different?
In depth responses are appreciated.
In: Biology
Electricity is electrons flowing through a wire. That’s fairly simple to understand.
What your nerve cells do isn’t simple and is really hard to ELI5.
Electrons have a negative charge. Ions like Na+ or K+ also have charge, but positive (metal stripped of one electron). They’re also bigger and tens of thousands of times heavier; an ion computer would be painfully slow.
You’re an ion computer.
Nerve cells are long, skinny, and often branched. They build up an electrical charge by pumping some of the positive ions out. When signaled by chemicals from the end (synapse) of the previous nerve, this opens a few floodgates (voltage-gated sodium channels) allowing positive ions back in. This flow opens nearby floodgates, creating a ripple of charge called an action potential that moves along the neuron’s length. When it reaches the end of the nerve, chemicals are released at the synapse to relay the ripple to the next nerve(s).
That is how your brain sends signals. Chemicals triggering a chain reaction of opening of ionic floodgates triggering chemicals. It’s slow (more than a million times slower than light) but also you can fit a lot of these things into a brain (far, far more than a computer chip has transistors) and they’re reasonably energy-efficient so it’s not all bad.
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