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Electrochemistry of the Nervous Impulse

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Comprehensive Treatise of Electrochemistry

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Abstract

A broad range of very important processes in a living cell have electrochemical nature. Nowhere is the electrochemical nature more controlling than in the phenomena of nervous impulse generation and propagation. The study of the nervous impulse has had a rich and at times even dramatic history. It may be proper to recall here that electrochemistry as a science dates back to Galvani’s (1798) experiments which eventually led to discovery of what he called “animal electricity.” The last decade ushered in an impressive advance in this field which became possible owing to the use of new methods of investigation of cell membranes and new model systems and to the development of a quantitative theory of induced ionic transport. Today, it would not be an overstatement to say that there has emerged a new—bioelectrochemical—approach to problems concerning the functioning of biological systems. Its major characteristic is that attention is concentrated on the physical nature of the phenomena, while most details of a different nature, extremely important for physiology as they may be, are consciously ignored.

Amazing as the phenomena inherent in inorganic matter are, they can by no means be compared with those related with the activity of the nervous system and life processes. M. Faraday

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., Institute of Electrochemistry, 31 Leninsky Prospekt, Moscow V-71, USSR

    Yu. A. Chizmadzhev & V. F. Pastushenko

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  1. Yu. A. Chizmadzhev
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  2. V. F. Pastushenko
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA

    Supramaniam Srinivasan

  2. Institute of Electrochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow, USSR

    Yu. A. Chizmadzhev

  3. Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA

    J. O’M. Bockris

  4. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Brian E. Conway

  5. Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

    Earnest Yeager

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© 1985 Plenum Press, New York

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Chizmadzhev, Y.A., Pastushenko, V.F. (1985). Electrochemistry of the Nervous Impulse. In: Srinivasan, S., Chizmadzhev, Y.A., Bockris, J.O., Conway, B.E., Yeager, E. (eds) Comprehensive Treatise of Electrochemistry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2359-4_7

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