Why does a wet brain conduct electricity just fine but a wet computer gets fried?
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In electronic devices, currents are caused by electrons shifting across a platform of solid metal particles. Water damage to an electronic device happens when microscopic impurities and metal ions in water form links and connect two points of a phone’s metal circuitboard that aren’t normally connected by the original circuitry. This abnormal connection will create a short in the circuit and send an electric current to an area where there shouldn’t be one. This is what fries the device.
Unlike current in an electronic device where electrons that could be sent in a wrong direction, the brain’s current is created by ion imbalances across two aqueous spaces (the extracellular and intracellular spaces). The current a brain conducts is created by the charge difference between different ions (Na+, Cl-, and K+) moving back and forth across the neuron’s membrane through ion channels. The movement of ions creates a membrane potential that can propagate down the axon. Both a computer and a brain generate electric currents, but the nature of how those current’s charges travel happen in different ways.
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