Exploring the Electricity of Our Brain: DC or AC?

[RuroumiKenshin]

What kind of electricity does our brain use? direct current or alternating current?

 

[Tyger]

Neither

it uses pulses. the pumping of Potassium ions creats a potential difference in the cells, and when the ions are allowed to permeate back into the cell it produces a traveling pulse along the axon.

 

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Tyger
it uses pulses. the pumping of Potassium ions creats a potential difference in the cells, and when the ions are allowed to permeate back into the cell it produces a traveling pulse along the axon.

But isn't an alternating current consistent of "pulses"?

 

[Dissident Dan]

I think that the electricity flows only one way down axons.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Tyger
it uses pulses. the pumping of Potassium ions creats a potential difference in the cells, and when the ions are allowed to permeate back into the cell it produces a traveling pulse along the axon.

What produces brain waves? Note that these are AC.

 

[damgo]

I wouldn't really call it AC or DC; we're talking about a system that uses a combination of electrical and chemical mechanisms to send information... it's not like electrons continuously flowing along a wire.

Anyways, like Tyger said, neurons at rest are polarized -- electrically charged wrt their surroundings. When one fires, one end becomes uncharged (depolarized) and voltage-gated ion channels operate to propagate this depolarization down the neuron. At the head of the wave, the current flows into the cell from outside; after it has passed by, ion pumps in the cell fairly quickly work to send current back out and reestablish polarization. The current is in the form of ions moving "sideways" in/out of the neuron, though, not along it.

Many neurons have a 'resting' rate where they fire, say, once a second; when they are stimulated/activated they fire more rapidly, maybe 10 times/second. Brain waves are given the sum of all the firing of neurons in a particular region. When a region is at rest, often its neurons will mostly be firing at their resting rate; there is also a tendency for them to synch up. So you get slow, high-amplitude brainwaves... when a region is active, the neurons are each doing their own thing, and you lots of destructive interference and you get low-intensity, high-frequency, chaotic waves.

 

[iron~orchid]

You should review -- Not just the electrical charges created in the brain but The electricity around the surrounding vicinity of the brain which affects a person's health and well-being.

Studies show that in Vibrational Medicine a patient is checked for electromagnetic field disturbances that may have resulted from environmental sources, such as exposure to electrical sub-stations, pylons, long hours in front of a computer screen, geological faults and Earth energy disturbances caused by mining, underground streams and natural Earth radiation.

Charts and plans are drawn of the patient’s living and work environment and, using dowsing and muscle-testing, areas of electromagnetic field imbalances are detected so that a patient may
move their bed or desk chair from an energetically draining location to a strengthening position. This simple discovery during a treatment assessment can have a profoundly positive effect upon the patient’s energy levels, sleeping patterns, mental attitude and over all immune function.