Most of us who don’t have medical or biological undergrad or beyond educations were taught in Secondary school that nerve conduction is simply “electrical” signals that traverse the nervous system in animal bodies , including our own. However, common sense leads one to accept that the signals that travel along our nervous systems are not “electrical” in the same sense that the copper wires inside a toaster are conductors of alternating current or direct current. So how does biological nerve conduction really work? I know it involves chemical processes including the exchange of electrons between adjacent cells in nerve tissue but I’d really like to understand it better.
In: Biology
Ions are atoms with electrical charge. There’s a negative charge in your neurons because there’s a chemical buildup of negative ions (potassium) in the neuron and positive ions (sodium) outside the neuron. That chemical difference is… voltage. There’s electrical potential there.
It’s exactly like your toaster.. just with tiny amounts of voltage. When one ion channel opens, it triggers the next one to open, which triggers the next one… and so on. The signal travels as the electrical/chemical gradient changes along the length of the neuron.
It’s like a wave in a slinky… just… chemical and electrical instead of mechanical.
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