Related papers: The Physics of Nerves
We present a recent theory for nerve pulse propagation and anesthesia and argue that both nerve activity and the action of anesthetics can be understood on the basis of simple physical laws. It was found experimentally that biological…
The action potential is widely considered a purely electrical phenomenon. However, one also finds mechanical and thermal changes that can be observed experimentally. In particular, nerve membranes become thicker and axons contract. The…
The Hodgkin-Huxley model of nerve pulse propagation relies on ion currents through specific resistors called ion channels. We discuss a number of classical thermodynamic findings on nerves that are not contained in this classical theory.…
The textbook picture of nerve activity is that of a propagating voltage pulse driven by electrical currents through ion channel proteins, which are gated by changes in voltage, temperature, pressure or by drugs. All function is directly…
This paper attempts to review our studies on the propagation of signals in nerves over the past decade. The need for interdisciplinary studies is stressed that helps to understand the physical mechanisms of coupling the electrical,…
The recent theoretical and experimental studies have revealed many details of signal propagation in nervous systems. In this paper an attempt is made to unify various mathematical models which describe the signal propagation in nerve…
Biological membranes mainly consist of lipids and proteins. While the proteins have many functions as single molecules, the membrane as a whole displays physical properties that cannot be explained on the single molecule level. For example,…
A bio tissue model consisting of multilayer spherical cells including four nested radial domains (nucleus, nuclear membrane, cytoplasm and plasma membrane) is worked out to derive the cell heating dynamics in presence of membrane…
The in silico simulations are widely used in contemporary systems biology including the analysis of nerve pulse propagation. As known from numerous experiments, the propagation of an action potential is accompanied by mechanical and thermal…
In this work, we propose and study the stability of nerve impulse propagation as electrical and mechanical signals through linear approximation. We present a potential energy stored in the biomembrane due to the deformation, bending, and…
In the recent years we have shown that cylindrical biological membranes such as nerve axons under physiological conditions are able to support stable electromechanical pulses called solitons. These pulses share many similarities with the…
In this paper, we report on the generation and propagation of traveling pulses in a homogeneous network of diffusively coupled, excitable, slow-fast dynamical neurons. The spatially extended system is modelled using the nearest neighbor…
Nerves are frequently stretched during movement. We investigate here the effect of stretch on nerve excitability within the framework of the soliton theory. This thermodynamic theory for nerve pulse propagation relies on the presence of a…
Recent studies have revealed the complex structure of nerve signals in axons. Besides the electrical signal, mechanical and thermal effects are also detected in many experimental studies. In this paper, the mathematical models of heat…
Biological signaling is imagined as a combination of activation and transport. The former is triggered by local molecular interactions and the latter is the result of molecular diffusion. However, other fundamental physical principles of…
Native membranes of biological cells display melting transitions of their lipids at a temperature of 10-20 degrees below body temperature. Such transitions can be observed in various bacterial cells, in nerves, in cancer cells, but also in…
In the last fifteen years a debate emerged about the validity of the famous Hodgkin-Huxley model for nerve impulse. Mechanical models have been proposed. This note reviews the experimental properties of the nerve impulse and discusses the…
Mathematical models describing the signals propagating in nerve fibres are described. The emphasis is on the mathematical structures of governing equations while the extremely rich physiological aspects are here not analysed. Based on…
Diffusion rates through a membrane can be asymmetric, if the diffusing particles are spatially extended and the pores in the membrane have asymmetric structure. This phenomenon is demonstrated here via a deterministic simulation of a…
We investigate different mechanical effects which accompany the nerve pulse propagation by using mathematical modeling. The propagation process is composed by three connected phenomena: (i) the action potential (electrical signal) which is…