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Scientists Say Nerves Use Sound, Not Electricity
gazzarda writes "The CBC is reporting that a team of Danish scientists are claiming that nerve impulses are transmitted by sound and not electricity. 'The common view that nerves transmit impulses through electricity is wrong and that they really transmit sound, according to a team of Danish scientists. The Copenhagen University researchers argue that biology and medical textbooks that say nerves relay electrical impulses from the brain to the rest of the body are incorrect.'"
...its really the sound of the tazer that is making your muscles contract in all kinds of ways and you losing motor control, not the hundreds of thousands of volts coursing through your body.
Wow... who would of guessed it!
einstein
http://anarchy-tv.com/
As a neuroscientist who has a healthy respect for a little anarchy from time to time, I have to call shenanigans on this one. I'd love to kick down the doors on some fundamentally held beliefs (my dissertation did something close to that), but this had me laughing out loud.
I've recorded from nerve cells in the classical manner and run the parametrics on different ionic concentrations and it would take quite a solid argument backed up by data for me to displace any of the credibility built on the classic Hodgkin and Huxley work.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
That may explain tinnitis, but it doesn't explain why nerves react to electricity.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Including the title, this summary repeats the same information FOUR times. Come on, we're not that stupid!
I am currently in an Intro to Neuroscience class atm, but this sounds a bit...off. I am, obviously, not a scientist, but it seems to me that 1.)neurons and their associated structures do not have the physiological equipment necessary to produce sound, and 2.)Considering that the vast majority of passive and active scanning procedures specifically monitor or stimulate electrical activity in the brain, this seems a wee bit kooky. But, as stated, I ain't a scientist. Sage wisdom, folks?
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
Is it just me, or did the summary say the same thing in three slightly different ways?
This essentially flies in the face of proven medical cases in which ENS (electrical nerve stimulation) has treated symptoms such as clinical depression and eplilepsy. What a load of crap. Now, I'm no doctor, but this flies in the face of basic medicine.
Other scientists say, "These scientists are idiots."
I'm so tired of hearing the press use "scientists say" as a legitimizing opener. If you believe something because "scientists" say so, you are probably not a scientist. If you were, you would be forced to know many scientists who are idiots; scientists who no one should listen to.
Peer reviewed and agreed upon usually means good science. The CBC saying, "scientists say" means squatcum.
How do they explain all of the electrical measurements of nerve cells? We have measured voltages and currents. We know that these are dependent on certain protein channels, and salt concentrations. If impulses are actually the result of "solitons", how can they explain half a century worth of neurobiology? One wild guess, based on a minor inconsistency (if it even exists as they believe) needs a hell of a lot more evidence before they should be taken seriously.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Time to replace all your tinfoil helmets with a pair of ear plugs.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
"Hey - will you guys quiet down? I can barely hear myself think!"
Ryan Fenton
There goes down the Matrix now...
On further review, it seems that the CBC article is total crap, but that the original paper isn't that far off the deep end. I admit that I don't know enough to really follow or critique the research, but it doesn't seem to be the crackpot theory that TFA implies. Nowhere, for example, does that paper say that nerves don't use electricity. In fact, the paper refers to "solitons" as a piezo-electric effect. They are merely proposing a new mechanism on top of previous theories, not trying to completely throw out all neuroscience to date.
To recap: Completely bogus headline, based on a completely bogus bit of popular science reporting, which itself is based on a possibly intriguing (but tentative) bit of original research. Nothing to see here.
okay, I can understand what they are saying but then why is it when your body is electrified, your nerves loose the (signal) from your brain and you convulse? If your nerves rely on sound and not on electricity then wouldn't there be no (nervous) reaction if and or when electricity goes through your body?
g0t b33r?
that I can drown out my pain by cranking up Motorhead?
maybe the physicists should stick to physics, and leave the chemistry and biology to the chemists and biologists.
Anyway, you can read that article in its entirety here: http://www.gamma.nbi.dk/Galleri/gamma143/nerves.pd f
IANANS (guess...) but I do find it very agreeable that it is odd that strength of an aneastaesia (yeah, it's misspelled) is proportional to its solubility in lipids if the inner workings of nerves are driven by electricity.
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
It's a series of tubes.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
They really could feel the music!
The original generic sig.
The theory explains perfectly why a whore's pussy feels SOOOO damn good. Good acoustics.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
...that would certainly explain the voices.
that's not strange at all, especially if you don't know the pharmacological target of an anesthetic. Many lipids are used as chemical second messengers. There are many membrane bound proteins that might be a target.
NO CARRIER
Every cell in your body is encapsulated by a cell membrane that is essentially two layers of lipids. It's not a real revelation that many drugs' effectiveness is enhanced by lipid-solubility.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
Professional (or potential) Physicists producing research about biology saying nerves work on sound.
Next thing you know some silly chemists from Utah will claim they discovered "cold" fusion by producing bubbles from metal rods.
Well, maybe when we live in Bizzaro world.
electrical impulses cause the nerve endings to vibrate.. these vibrations propagate out through the surrounding fluid. the neurotransmitters released ride the waves across the gap between nerve cells. these vibrations constitute sound..do i believe this.. no. but. whatever.
This could explain the intense physical reaction to fingernails on a chalkboard. Hits just the right frequency, perhaps...
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Must be true. All the Brown Noise from this story made me crap my pants.
then why don't my legs jerk when I fart?
Just a question.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
What happens when you play those nerves backwards?
You turn into Ozzy Osbourne?
... I dance like an idiot to loud German trance music.
It's not because I'm drunk, It's involuntary movements caused by the sound, Some "scientists" said so!
God Be Gone
From what I vaguely remember of my artskool audio class, Sound at wavelengths of 5hz and below are more than capable of disrupting human thought. 10hz being the South Park "brown sound," which will disrupt the bowels (see also Transmetropolitan, etc).
...EEG results... NOT! Oh, and experiments in biology going all the way back to that guy who put wires on dead frog legs and made them twitch, sorry don't feel like looking it up. Oh, and when I was a kid and I had the electronic project kit and made my thumb twitch with electricity. Or, anybody who's ever felt a shock. Yes. From now on, we'll do all of that by YELLING REALLY LOUD.
And no, I didn't read TFA, but do I really have to? For once, I think not.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Imagine all the possibilities! You could make someone do something just by yelling at them loud enough!!
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
Before 1914 we had it all figured out: Gravity, Electromagnetism, blackbody radiation...
Heck, us humans have observed gravity and it's effects for millenia, while the underlying principle that drives it (Einstein's General Relativity) has only recently been even proposed.
You are right about the evidence though.
By sound, I think they mean "Phonons", which are the 'quanta' of sound, and have been seen to affect molecules on small scales. It may be a combination of ions, phonons, and voltage potentials that create nerve signals. As molecules change shape ( say ion pores ), especially in cell membranes, they could set up phonons in the cell surface, or internal scaffold proteins, and these could affect the behaviour of other pores.
While I fully agree that saying nerves transmit via electricity only is incorrect, I have a hard time viewing action potential propagation as sound in any way shape or form. It would be more correct to label it as electro chemical transmission. Neurons propagate action potentials down their axons with a really neat system of chemical gradients that result from differeing concentration of Sodium ion, potassium ion and chloride ion between the intercellular fluid and the extracellular fluid. Electricity can disrupt these charged ions as well as the voltage gated ion channels (i.e. changes in voltage open or close pathways in the cell membrane that allow the ions to diffuse along their concenttraion and charge gradients and the cell constantly uses an energy expending process, the Sodium Potassium pump, to create differences between intra and extracellular fluid) in the cell membrane which cause changes in the previous ions concentrations which (duh) is why shocking a frog's leg can make it move and why we measure all sorts of voltages. Google squid giant axon, action potentials, nernst equation, voltage clamp, nodes of ranvier, myelin, saltatory conduction, etc for some good information. Remember voltage is only a reading of the difference in charge between point A and point B. Volts aren't what kill you. Current is.
Also once this action potential travels down the length of the axon it reaches a synapse, which then requires a chemical means of sending a message to the next neuron.
Does this mean that the next time someone kicks me in the nads all I need are earplugs for the pain to go away?
I don't think I will test that theory, I'll let someone else do it.
"This is America... where the will of the few outweigh the outrage of the many..." - Unknown
This theory doesn't necessarily contradict Hodgkin and Huxley model. As a neuroscientist, you should surely know that H&H have developed their models based on giant squid nerve. The recordings you have done in the "classical manner" are also on large nerves.
Their model would explain the narrow (myelinated) nerves (used to transmit pain), which are used to conduct pain. These nerves are much narrower than H&H nerve model, and the "classical" model has difficulty explaining the efficiency of transmission in such nerves.
After reading the article, I thought maybe I'd slipped up a bit and somehow missed a few weeks, but no, it's not April First...
:o)
*I* want some of what *THEY* are smoking...
--Tomas
Rephrasing the same statement three times is actually not the same thing as elaborating on it. Repeating something three times dos not provide more information. It's wrong to think that stating something three times over will make for a better summary.
sic transit gloria mundi
Shutup, you're getting on my nerves.
God spoke to me.
deaf people walk?
Organization: alphabetical, sometimes numerical or messy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpVCz32Wp4Q
To illustrate, his most compelling argument is this: "The physical laws of thermodynamics tell us that electrical impulses must produce heat as they travel along the nerve, but experiments find that no such heat is produced."
This was when I thought he was full of shit. Any type of 'communication' requires some energy. The transduction of sound (molecules hitting one another in a propagating a pressure wave) also could produce heat in the thermodynamic argument. TFA is lacking on sufficient detail to look into this further.
The conduction of nerve impulses is understood at a detailed molecular level. There are numerous experiments that have observed everything from individual charges and ions traveling through channels and careful electrical modeling, to rationally designed anaesthetics that interact with specific molecules and targeted modifications of channels.
Now, it's always a good idea to keep an open mind. But these people have presented no even remotely interesting evidence that we need a change in paradigms. They are simply nuts.
Why do I only seem to get mod points on Friday evenings when poop like this populates the home page? I give up.
...can we say officially that this part of slashdot has become a FANSCOS now (First Annual NeuroScientist Convention On Slashdot) ?
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
They don't???
Mine always do. And my cheeks flap. Sometimes quite vigorously.
One day after sleeping badly, an anatomist went to his frog laboratory and removed from a cage one frog with white spots on its back. He placed it on a table and drew a line just in front of the frog. "Jump frog, jump!" he shouted. The little critter jumped two feet forward. In his lab book, the anatomist scribbled, "Frog with four legs jumps two feet."
Then, he surgically removed one leg of the frog and repeated the experiment. "Jump, jump!" To which, the frog leaped forward 1.5 feet. He wrote down, "Frog with three legs jumps 1.5 feet."
Next, he removed a second leg. "Jump frog, jump!" The frog managed to jump a foot. He scribbled in his lab book, "Frog with two legs jumps one foot."
Not stopping there, the anatomist removed yet another leg. "Jump, jump!" The poor frog somehow managed to move 0.5 feet forward. The scientist wrote, "Frog with one leg jumps 0.5 feet."
Finally, he eliminated the last leg. "Jump, jump!" he shouted, encouraging forward progress for the frog. But despite all its efforts, the frog could not budge. "Jump frog, jump!" he cried again. It was no use; the frog would not response. The anatomist thought for a while and then wrote in his lab book, "Frog with no legs goes deaf."
(joke shamelessy copied from this site)
Yes, I am the one with the legendary sig.
Its very possible that neurons communicate using both electrical signals and sound solitons (and who knows what else?). If you play around with genetic algorithms or supercompilers you see that optimal solutions to problems often use unexpected mechanisms that defy logical analysys. We should expect to see this sort of efficiency in real evolved systems too.
A single nerve cell transmits information by having a depolarized zone travel down the axon, which is an electrochemical process.
Information travels between nerve cells through synapses, which can either be chemical (using a neurotransmitter) or "electric" (electrochemical).
So if these guys claim that biology and medical textbooks talk about electrical impulses, maybe they need to get some real textbooks first and non some pop-sci ones.
I believe brain has multiple systems to ensure the signals gets through or get reliably.
Sound maybe one of them.Electricity another.The third one might be chemical pathway or radio frequency.
Dismissing the idea,brain would have one point of failure,one big magnet and the nerve system is useless(not to mention the interference from the electric devices and wires).
It's so loud in here "I can't hear myself think."
And for all this time I thought that was just a figure of speech.
First, the Biophysical Journal is fairly respectable, and a much more appropriate place to publish work in this area. Second, the actual journal article in the Biophysical Journal does NOT say what the Slashdot and CBC titles say, so judging them on this basis is inappropriate. The article is an extension of a previously published model which shows that nerve signal propagation can be described as 100m/s piezo-electric soliton pulses, and it shows that these are dependent upon the phase transition temperatures for membranes.
I always wanted to work as an electrician but I've been deathly afraid of, you know, accidentally touching a line and the electricity causing my muscles to contract and involuntarily clamping onto a naked wire. Glad to know that's a myth now! Wait, I still hate heights. Perhaps it's time for me to pursue a brave new career as a lightning rod!
What the...? Nerve impulses are transmitted by sound?! I can't believe my ears!
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
It is entirely possible for ionic transfer to induce mechanical transformation within nerve cells, and in turn, for such movement to trigger ionic transfer. Remember these?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I'm sure I have at least 2 kA current from ankle to brains that can produce heat.So P=I^2*R=m*c*delta(T) right..So you suggest that heat from current in my nerves should be visible on thermal camera ??? Damn that stupid. Stick a needle in your nerve put a nice high gain amplifier ....no that sounds like torture...perhaps voltage coming out of the nerves is so high that you can measure it on the skin on some places. The answer for this people will come when they'll understand why we use transformers in power systems :))
Reading the original article (link at CBC) the CBC story - to put it (very) mildly - takes liberties with the claims of the authors - their results concern the effects of anesthetics on membrane thermodynamics. They claim that anesthetics all act through the same mechanism (in its self quite a claim). They say that these (typically small membrane soluble) molecules change the thermodynamic properties of the membranes of neurons in such a manner as to prevent the proper operation of proteins, called ion channels, in the membrane that are necessary for the propagation of the electric impulses along the membrane.. no electric impulse no pain signal ..
If it is sound, why did Galvani's experiments with electricity and frogs' legs work?
My brain actually listens to what I see? How confusing...
Well, if nerves really do communicate by sound that would explain why my head feels like someone is playing a thrash metal tune in it when I have a migraine.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Insightful gives karma, funny doesn't.
So the music really does move your body.
When I first read the I article snippet I thought, as much of the /.ers, that this was bogus. Then I did a search and found a better article - and in comments to that article I found the actual text from the researchers.
http://www.citebase.org/fulltext?format=applicatio n%2Fpdf&identifier=oai%3AarXiv.org%3Aphysics%2F061 0117
I think you'll find that most of the concerns that the /. audience brings up are addressed.
Thinking outside the box is hard - even for those of us who feel we are scientifically minded.
-CF
Having a bullshit filter is a good thing, and mine was in the red when I read this.
So somebody said nerve signals are sent by sound and not electrical impulses? Tell that to the people who regain hearing thanks to cochlear implants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant), or to the people who have prosthetics that move based on electrical impulses (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1035304.stm). In fact, why not tell this to everyone who could be wasting their time doing research in the field of neuroprosthetics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroprosthetics)?
In space, no one can... move their leg?
Google: "All your data are belong to us."
interesting theory. maybe it got something to with the supposedly smallest entities of our universe.
somehow all the old wisdom is getting some sort of evidently proof, like:
to be on the same wavelength with each other or that you can "smell" someone (like him). in the end we will learn, that it's all connected. after all, everything is just energy right? so it's just a matter of transformation or on a superstring level a matter of representation.
the summary is incorrect and TFA is total rubbish. Go read the original paper. Here is the abstract:
. 099754v1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=& author1=Heimburg&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcet ype=HWCIT/
Abstract
It is known that the action of general anesthetics is proportional to their partition coefficient in lipid membranes (Meyer-Overton rule). This solubility is, however, directly related to the depression of the temperature of the melting transition found close to body temperature in biomembranes. We propose a thermodynamic extension of the Meyer-Overton rule which is based on free energy changes in the system and thus automatically incorporates the effects of melting point depression. This model accounts for the pressure reversal of anesthesia in a quantitative manner. Further, it explains why inflammation and the addition of divalent cations reduce the effectiveness of anesthesia.
http://www.biophysj.org/cgi/rapidpdf/biophysj.106
The article is not about sound waves but about the mechanism of action of anesthetics and the proposal is that the action is not via drug binding to specific receptors but due to their affect on the thermodynamic properties of the membrane. In fact, since anesthetics screw up transmission (be that electrical or whatever) by altering membrane properties nothing can be concluded about the nature of the mechanism that they disrupt. It would be an identical situation to say that since salt can melt ice then hockey players glide over the ice not because of force applied but to the amount of pickles they eat (or smth like that).
Slashdot becoming f.....g drudge report.
Man Oh Man do I find this so exciting, and such a life saver too. I am slowly going deaf;(not so slowly if you ask my wife) it is to the point now that I have had to learn how to read lips. Unfortunately I cannot afford the cost of a hearing aide, as they are selling for 6k or more. So if this is true I should be able to hear through my fingers or any other body part I care to, or am allowed to press up against whoever is speaking. Sure wouldn't mind testing said theory with Jennifer Love Hewitt .
IF you can't be famous be infamous. But for GODS sake be something
If sound propagated down a nerve by sound, it'd end there. There's no mechanism to produce sound when a neurotransmitter from the first nerve mated with a receptor on the next.
Also, we listen to brain waves with an EEG or MEG, which measure minute electrical or magnetic impulses. We do not use a microphone and amplifier. Plus, we induce currents with electricity and magnetism, not loudspeakers, and produce predictable results.
Sound waves of sufficient intensity to propagate the full length of a nerve would be so strong in the main trunk that they'd disrupt the transport mechanism carrying neurotransmitters down from the cell body. They'd isloate the nerve from participating in the local neural network.
A new theory should explain everything just as well as the old plus more. This one falls apart at the basics and can't handle some of the nuances.
If sound propagation were the key, all that sodium and potassium gating to change the local membrane charge would be useless, and nature hates that kind of waste.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I mean C'mon: Three sentences that essentially say the same thing.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
a million of ravers/clubbers can't be wrong...
I'd have to say all old news. To many scientists say they discovered something new, its not common that they want to change something. So I tend to stay out of arguments about stuff like this until is in a science book. Only then can anyone say its true, because then they proved otherwise it wouldn't be there.
It may sound correct however, if this were true, devices that use electrical nerve stimulation would not function properly. This is not because that sound-based neurons would not be stimulated, they likely would, but due to the fact that many designed in such a way that they block signals traveling in the opposite direction than intended. I seem to recall it was by inducing a sufficiently high level of magnetic flux in the nerve to prevent threshold voltage from being reached and causing the nerve to fire.
Wikipedia has a very good article on action potentials and the current science we know about nerve function. It is fairly complete. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Potential.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
We have about 4 neuroscientists, 5- physicists, and about8 other people who seem to be able to read a journal articles.
The rest of the herd all seem to have no ability to read the article or the commentaries before making statements that are truly asshat in nature. (not to be confused by the asshat commentaries that occasional appear in nature, which became a sub-thread in this discussion and was perhaps a more interesting and worthwhile topic).
So,
I didn't like anova or variogram this ((IAAE[sorta...so IASAE may be more appropriate]) but actually (IAAB) so the variogram is debateable for me to use ass I prescribe to degrees of freedom... which could be a critique of nature in itself (once again the paper as we know that nature in itself laughs at variograms and those who use them and those who critique them (although Tukey laughs in his gave at both modelers and the nature that laughs at them)), but the distribution is definitely not normal, there is a definite skewing of a 5% that has a scientific edumakayshun, and the 95% that are system administrators or something like that that read about science, and then make some online commentary because they think they are scientists as they work with computers and scientists come to ask them questions. Anyway,this surge of anti-intellectualism that seems to travel from janitors to middle managers to the current asshat president... is very depressing. It demonstrates an inability to listen to those who have a specializations in an area, and hence disregards the human species primary tool for adaptation, the ability for abstract thought to not be focused on a single topic.
Anyway, as always... I start to comment on something in slashdot andd it makes me realize how stupid humans are and I get all apocalyptic because of the failings of the forebrain.
I digress... I thought the paper was kinda cool and I thank the NS that dug it out... I skimmed it ffor like 3 minutes and I don't see how this is really mega earthshattering or newsworthy... what I got was that they used the gibbs equation to look at the physics of I guess you could say neuronal flux... I mean...we know that it is a fluid dynamic system so it is not going to be a semi or super conductor... but IANAP... so I have always skimmed such things...
Anyway, I dug it, as GFE always allows us to related things that seem un-relatable to the semi-lucid mind... so "GIBBS UBER ALLES!!!" I guess is my response to the article... but
anyway, I digressed too much, must go lift weights now.
in a forest, and I _do_ hear it, will that cause my nerve cells to react and make me like pee my pants or something? :-)
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
Then how else do YOU explain the brown note? A sound that makes you go poopie in your pants!
today is spelling optional day.
It is not at all odd. The control of the ionic gradients of nerve impulses is known to be in the lipid bilayer of the nerve cell membranes, thus it is perfectly logical that lipid solubility of anesthetics is related to the strength of their effect.
Sheesh, biologists and physicists can be so frustrating sometimes. I think they're both scared of chemistry.
One needs to look at two different s of how cells communicate with each other: electrochemically and physically.
If an impulse in a nerve cell causes a change in ionic concentration, which causes a conformational change in a surface protein, which causes a conformational change in the surface protein of an adjacent cell, then the signal was transmitted (arguably) through a physical phenomenon: sound.
If an impulse in a nerve cell causes a change in ionic concentration, which causes a conformational change in a surface protein, which causes that protein to release a charged ion across a synapse, which ion is then gathered at a protein on an adjacent cell where the charge is passed on, then the signal was transmitted (arguably) through an energetic phenomenon: electrical.
At the level of molecular orbitals, though, it's all about the same. A molecule or ion of a higher energy state influenced a species of a lower energy state. Energy was passed from one to the other. Since cells don't have ears I doubt that they make any distinction of how the energy is transferred.
Think of rubbing your hands together while looking at them with infrared glasses. While you wouldn't think you're generating any light it will be clear, from the infrared glasses, that your hands, due to the increase in heat, are generating additional radiation in the form of photons in the IR range of the spectrum.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Now is a good time to point out that their of DNA was based upon work which their in lab research assistant, Rosalind Franklin, conducted. While Watson and Crick won the Nobel Prize nobody ever remembers Franklin.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Just looking at the transmission speeds makes it clear what is going here:
Data:
Summary: neural transmission is orders of magnitude too slow to qualify as either an electrical or sonic phenomenon.
Conclusion: TFA suggests replacing one gross oversimplification of neural transmission with another. Neural transmission might have some qualities of both but is clearly neither. TFA is garbage.
Note Bene:There is no way of knowing what the original work was talking about. I cannot imagine anyone who has studied neural transmissions saying anything like TFA's contents. I suspect that the author of TFA was presented with an anology and took it for fact.
Doesn't have the same pizzazz as electric...
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
So that's why it hurts so much to watch American Idol.
Next thing you know, these physicists will be fighting over whether light is a particle or a wave.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Would you be offended if I suggest you to follow a Communications 101 course ?
Is it legal to smoke pot in Copenhagen?
Science is the scientific method, but the practice of science is absolutely guided by intuition and obviousness.
You can't test it all (at least, I don't have time to), and the "hypothesize" part you're talking about is formed from our intuition and the obviousness of some theories based on available information and evidence.
(Side note: You'd actually have a pretty hard time making my muscles "work" by pushing on my brain. Not working is a lot easier (and fun!).)
(Side note 2: Our brains aren't "meant to operate" in any particular way, unless we were designed. Our brains do operate, and it's that operation that we use science to describe.)
You're falling into the mistake of taking a single simple behavior and saying that, because two things could cause it, those two things are equally likely to be the root-cause/underlying-mechanism of the greater field of behaviors of the system in question. It's not one test that makes this theory highly unlikely. It's the entire field of evidence.
It's a testament to the wikiality of Slashdot that someone using that broken style of argument could skate by as "5, Insightful" while someone calling them on it gets called a troll, only to have someone else use the same style of argument and hang onto a karmic 2.
I'll take my licks in moderation, but you're both still horrendously wrong.
You bastard...
While they do cite the huge amount of research demonstrating the role of ion channels and electrical currents, they then proceed to ignore it. With respect to anesthetics, they go back to what used to be a favored theory of general anesthetic action, that they work by perturbing the structure of the membrane, which was based on the Meyer-Overton rule that potency of general anesthetics is correlated with their lipid solubility. This MO rule lost much of its persuasive power when it was discovered that effects of general anesthetics on luciferase--a soluble enzyme in the absence of membranes--also follow the MO rule. The explanation is that the interior of most proteins is also a hydrophobic "lipid like" environment even though it contains no actual lipid.
The authors are a bit more sophisticated, citing other "lipid-like" phenomenae such as pressure reversal of general anesthesia. They are correct that this is not explained by the current model, but are probably barking up the wrong tree in retreating to the lipid model of general anesthesia. In fact, membrane proteins show a variety of interesting and poorly understood effects of pressure, so the explanation probably does not reside in a lipid-only model, but rather in a better understanding of how pressure and temperature affect membrane ion channels. It is possible that some sort of hybrid approach, taking into account interactions between proteins and membrane lipids will be necessary to achieve a full understanding. So while I think that they are on the wrong track, they are making a contribution in pointing out that there is a need for a more thermodynamic understanding of nerve conduction. I suspect that this is what led the Biophysical Journal to accept the paper, even though the authors' favored model lacks physiologically plausibility.
That would explain why my ears ring. It might even explain why we all like music so much, but not electricity.
I haven't done any actual research on electricity in nerves, but I have suffered from L'Hermittes Syndrome. After radiation therapy degrades the myelin sheath of your spinal cord, for several months you can shock yourself by turning your neck the right way (usually putting your chin down to your chest). It doesn't hurt, but it does feel VERY similar to the buzz you get when you touch something plugged into a wall outlet. Similar enough that I would be outright shocked if it turned out to be caused my anything other than electricity.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
a quaintly victorian sounding theory, it is, if you ask me.
I personally hypothesize that the aqueous flow of the nerve-system be engaged by the power of steam, the liver being the primary motivator in the cog-mechanism that enables motive energy in the body; and the primary aerators being foremost upon one's topside in the cranio-facial region, while the extricator of gaseous substances, much like an inverse smoke-stack, being found in the lower dorsal region in the form of a blow-hole.
but maybe that's just me.
So I developed this anxiety disorder (ptsd) that cost me my $300k+ per year job. Up until that time a nuclear bomb could have gone off behind me while I was FOCUSED on a particular problem and I wouldn't have noticed. Now I have severe anxious reactions to loud sounds to the extent that I can't see through the noise at all. I'm not unemployed for fun.
Probably no correlation.
My 2c is let the NS's work on it no matter how far fetched.
So now they'll need to rewrite Frankenstein. Instead of coming to life on a slab during a huge lightning storm, he'll need to be placed in front of the speakers at a Van Halen concert.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
*Now* I can finally understand all those bodies gyrating on the dance floor and at rock concerts ... they're puppets on strings!
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
this is the missing link? That sound and electricity are related and it took a biological experiment to make this link? Going very basic here, electricity is the flow of electrons, while sound is mechanical waves propagating from a source. What if electricity is not the flow of electrons but rather the mechanical flow of energy between electrons? That what we have thought is electrons moving is actually the energy from one electron moving to another and so on and so forth? Then, in the end, electricity is nothing but mechanical energy, aka sound, moving at the speed of light.
Disclaimer: I am not a published scientist, merely an imaginer of science fiction, also not published.
No further comment.
Theoretical physicists who think they know more than any other type of scientist simply because they are .... (gasp and awe) ..... physicists! This is just another instance of people trying to generate some media buzz over nothing."
Heimburg and Jackson theorize that sound propagation is a much more likely explanation.
"It's not a "much more likely" explanation at all. Not even slightly.
Propagation of membrane potentials by salutatory conduction along axons (ie. electrical nerve impulses) is confirmed countless times every day all over the world via the endless scientific experiments and medical procedures that are based on that theory. Every level of biology (from the genetic level to the biochemical level to the cellular level to the whole organism level) confirms the electrical impulse theory.
And here's the clincher...
"Although sound waves usually weaken as they spread out, a medium with the right physical properties could create a special kind of sound pulse or "soliton" that can propagate without spreading or losing strength. "
Oh I see. So in order to substantiate their unproven idea that nerve impulses are actually sound and not electrical in nature, they are invoking an unknown and theoretical set of physiological conditions that must be present in order for their theory to be correct! What absurd circular logic.
Slashdot needs a way to "thumbs down" stupid articles so they disappear.
Unfortunately, I went to the research paper before fully reading the CBC article. If only I had read that final sentence!
OPEN LETTER TO THE EDITORS OF REPUTABLE (if you really, really think it is reputable) NEWS SOURCES:
Dear Editors,
Please refrain from publishing any article about a scientific study that includes the phrase, "Scientists say..." in the title yet also includes in the body something similar to, "The researchers could not immediately be reached for comment." It is embarrassing for a scientist to have his/her work spun in an uninformed or misleading way, especially when you do not give them a chance to correct you! It is also a stain on your own reputation to publish such material and a disservice to those of us who do not read primary research literature regularly, but rather rely on general news sources for science news.
Love & Kisses,
Your Readers