I just thought about the fact that people move through electrical pulses traveling through neurons in the brain and muscles through the body. Here is what i know: the body is full of 97 or more, percent of water. the thoughts we have and the moves we make are a result of electrical impulses within the neurons and cells. My question is why the water does not disperse the impulse and or make it completely ineffective. My personal guess would be that each neuron is made of or has an outer layer of electric resistance material that( is it conducts) electricity.
How do neurons send electric pulses even though they are surrounded by liquid which is mostly water?
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1$\begingroup$ You might want to begin to look at ion pumps and channels (plenty of good wiki articles). Remember pure water is not a good conductor but with ions it becomes so. In biology, signals are propagated by the control of ions across membranes and other gradients. Have a look at action potentials as well. I'd answer this but I know there are some really good nuro people on here and I'm not one of them. $\endgroup$– Atl LEDFeb 20, 2014 at 4:35
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$\begingroup$ Ooh, even more interestingly, how do we control ions, hormones and catalysts? $\endgroup$– Diamond Louis XIVFeb 20, 2014 at 4:43
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1$\begingroup$ read about synapses $\endgroup$– WYSIWYGFeb 20, 2014 at 9:05
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$\begingroup$ We are not made of 97% water en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_water $\endgroup$– fileunderwaterFeb 20, 2014 at 10:30
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Neurons have sodium, potassium, as well as some calcium channels all over the surface of the cell (I'm giving a very generalized explanation here). The "electric pulses" that you are mentioning is more of electrostatic potentials generated from the interactions of cations and anions flowing in and out of the channels. Water at the specific pH surrounding the cations is a good conductor of these electrostatic interactions.
You have to remember that there are large negatively charged anion proteins inside the neurons which attract the cations (sodium ions for example) to rush into the cell. Once threshold is reached all gates open and an action potential is produced.
