NEUR 1201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Alessandro Volta, Luigi Galvani, Membrane Potential

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Neuroscience
• Course: NEUR 1201
• Professor: Kim Hellemans

Document Summary

Life & energy to equilibrium: a general rule of nature is that if you separate things, or move them out of equilibrium, they will tend to re-equilibrate. It does(cid:374)(cid:859)t (cid:396)eall(cid:455) (cid:373)atte(cid:396) (cid:449)hat t(cid:455)pe of fo(cid:396)(cid:272)e is i(cid:374)(cid:448)ol(cid:448)ed. Instead of maintaining an electric charge across two poles (as a battery does), neurons maintain an electric charge across their membrane: neurons have more negatively charged ions (wanderer g. ) inside their membrane than outside. For this reason, we say that the neuron is polarized: the converse is true by necessity: neurons have more positively charged particles outside their membrane than inside. If (cid:455)ou (cid:449)e(cid:396)e to use a (cid:448)olt(cid:373)ete(cid:396) to (cid:373)easu(cid:396)e the (cid:374)eu(cid:396)o(cid:374)(cid:859)s ele(cid:272)t(cid:396)i(cid:272)al pote(cid:374)tial, (cid:455)ou(cid:859)d fi(cid:374)d it to be -70mv while the neuron is at rest. In other words, -70mv is the resting potential: the neuron does not have positive or negative poles like a battery.