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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.'"
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.
You need to take "Logic 101" classes. Just because muscles react to electricity (and body transmits electricity) does not prove in any way that it is necessarily electricity that is used by body to control muscles. In the same way one can conclude that just becuase body reacts to bullets means that it uses bullets internally, which is nonsense.
That wouldn't prove sound controls nerves, for it is quite common knowledge that doing something like that would upset your middle ear, so you'd lose balance and become nauseous just because of that.
Ignore this signature. By order.
The current bunch of moderators must have a horribly attenuated sense of humour. This is the first slashdot post for months and months that actually made made me fully appreciate the meaning of 'LOL', because I did! Yet it gets scored +5 'Interesting', while hordes of pathetic little jibes get +5 funny. I just don't get what makes you lot tick.
And electro-shock, EEG's, retinal implants, and the old squid cell experiments where you stick electrodes in a squid neuron and measure its behavior are all based on a wrong theory, because the idiot who wrote The Fine Article can't figure out where the heat went from conduction of electricity in living matter? It's sitting inside a living organism with lots of *other* thermal processes going on: the heat generation is easily lost in the thermal noise.
I'll believe it when I see experimental evidence: but the article as presented is pretending that God makes timepieces himself because you found a watch in the desert. It's nonsense.
IAAN (I am a neuroscientist, yeah you knew that already) and, as they Physicist already explained, you are in fact describing electrical currents. So I agree with the other two neuroscientists, saying that the electrical models we have are wrong is just BS.
/. summary above. I'd imagine the actual paper makes a more sensible argument, but I'm not going to read that before monday, so...
There are plenty of valid criticisms you can bring to the HH model. It cannot account for all observations (there was a paper in Nature recently exactly to this point) and after all, when you try to model primate cells with HH dynamics, you are in effect comparing your monkey with a giant squid! It has tbh always amazed me how well that worked at all. So if you're going to say, HH is inadequate, that's fair. If you are going to say that non-electrical pathways for transmitting information exist alongside the known electrical currents, that's also fair and you have my complete attention. But you can't just say that nerves don't use electricity, that just labels you as someone trying to be sensationalist. Besides, if you could prove this beyond reasonable doubt, you should and would send the paper to Nature.
Then again, this is my reaction to the
Insightful gives karma, funny doesn't.