IUBio

unconventional communication

Leslie Kay lmk2 at garnet.berkeley.edu
Wed Dec 30 14:57:54 EST 1992


In article <9212262154.AA14329 at net.bio.net> GWU5042 at GWUVM.GWU.EDU (Hans Xie) writes:
>
>2. Alternating electric fields can activate membrane ATPase (Tsong, BBA
>    vol 1113, p53).  Can neurons generate electric fields, even transiently,
>    during normal situation, such as depolarization?
>
>3. What about magnetic field?  There are some works on the influence of

EEG and field potentials are created by the fluctuating currents of masses
of neurons, the dendritic current arises in connection with the spike
initiating zone on the neuron.  In populations of neurons, especially
those lined up in parallel, a summation effect is produced, which can
be measured at the surface of the brain, the scalp, or with deep electrodes
implanted directly in the cortex.  Every electric field has its associated
magnetic field, but it is not clear if either of these has a functional
role.  Some people refer to these as just the "noise" generated by the
neural masses, which are helpful to us in trying to decipher what is
going on in neural processing.

I do not have them handy, but there are several references by Walter
Freeman which explain the formation of EEG from masses of neurons.

Leslie Kay
UCB Biophysics
lmk2 at garnet.berkeley.edu



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