Nerve Communication I: Wave Propagation and Action Potentials

Abstract

The generation of the nerve action potential is important from the point of pure scientific curiosity as well as from the medical point of view where pathological defects of action potential propagation are to be understood and treated. Experiments conducted by Hodgkin and Huxley in the mid-twentieth century laid the foundation of biophysical models of nerve signal generation. The model provides an elegant description of action potential simulation that can be easily simulated on a numerical computer. Although the Hodgkin-Huxley model is a non-linear model, the concepts of systems analysis developed so far in this book can be used to understand the experimental model as well as the implications of the final model. Looking at the microscopic behavior of ion channels, we find systems analysis very useful to determine the rate constants used in the action potential model. Finally, in this chapter we extend the Hodgkin-Huxley model for the propagating action potential.

It is now possible to study evolution in a test tube, in the absence of any living organisms.

– John Maynard Smith