Abstract
In all tissues of the human body, the cytoplasm of the constituent cells has an ionic composition very different from that of the extracellular fluid. The plasma membranes of the cells are adorned with an assortment of regulated ion channels and pumps that control this differential distribution of ions. As a result of these unbalanced ion distributions, the plasma membranes of all living cells exhibit a bioelectric charge that represents a form of potential energy that the cells can exploit for various purposes. Neurons have greatly refined this universal feature of plasma membranes and bent it to the task of information processing.
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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Beckstead, R.M. (1996). The Bioelectrical Activity of the Neuronal Membrane. In: A Survey of Medical Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8570-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8570-5_2
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-94488-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-8570-5
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