The common view that nerves
transmit impulses through
electricity is wrong and they
really transmit sound, according
to a team of Danish scientists.
The Copenhagen University
researchers argue that biology
and medical textbooks that say
nerves relay electrical impulses
from the brain to the rest of
the body are incorrect.
"For us as physicists, this
cannot be the explanation," said
Thomas Heimburg, an associate
professor at the university's
Niels Bohr Institute. "The
physical laws of thermodynamics
tell us that electrical impulses
must produce heat as they travel
along the nerve, but experiments
find that no such heat is
produced."
Heimburg, an expert in
biophysics who received his PhD
from the Max Planck Institute in
Goettingen, Germany — where
biologists and physicists often
work together in a rare
arrangement — developed the
theory with Copenhagen
University's Andrew Jackson, an
expert in theoretical physics.
According to the traditional
explanation of molecular
biology, an electrical pulse is
sent from one end of the nerve
to the other with the help of
electrically charged salts that
pass through ion channels and a
membrane that sheathes the
nerves. That membrane is made of
lipids and proteins.
Heimburg and Jackson theorize
that sound propagation is a much
more likely explanation.
Although sound waves usually
weaken as they spread out, a
medium with the right physical
properties could create a
special kind of sound pulse or "soliton"
that can propagate without
spreading or losing strength.
