English

Primary and secondary components of nerve signals

Biological Physics 2018-12-14 v1

Abstract

The action potential propagating in a nerve fibre generates accompanying mechanical and thermal effects. The whole signal is therefore an ensemble which includes primary and secondary components. The primary components of a signal are the action potential itself and longitudinal mechanical waves in axoplasm and surrounding biomembrane. These components are characterized by corresponding velocities. The secondary components of a signal are derived from primary components and include transverse displacement of a biomembrane and the temperature -- these have no independent velocities but have been measured in several experiments. A robust mathematical model is presented based on differential equations describing the signal primary components which are coupled into a system by coupling forces. The model includes also mathematical formulation for establishing the secondary components following the ideas from experimental studies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1812.05335,
  title  = {Primary and secondary components of nerve signals},
  author = {Jüri Engelbrecht and Kert Tamm and Tanel Peets},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.05335},
  year   = {2018}
}