Scientists have discovered a new way information may be traveling throughout the brain. The team has identified slow-moving brainwaves it says could be carried only by the brain’s gentle electrical field, a mechanism previously thought to be incapable of spreading neural signals altogether. (I’ll tell you why I think this is important at the end of this article.)
Dominique Durand, professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University says “Researchers have thought that the brain’s endogenous electrical fields are too weak to propagate wave transmission, But it appears the brain may be using the fields to communicate without synaptic transmissions, gap junctions or diffusion.”
What led Durand and her team of researchers to this conclusion was the recording of neural spikes traveling too slowly to be carried by conventional means, indicating something else was at play. They claim that the only possible explanation for the passage of information in this way was the presence of a weak electrical field.
The team tested its theory both by way of computer modeling and observing activity in the hippocampus of a mouse brain, the central region associated with memory and spatial navigation. While the electrical field was weak, with an amplitude of around 2.6 mV/mm, the team found that beginning with one cell or a group of cells, the field was able to stimulate neighboring neurons which in turn stimulated their neighboring neurons. This resulted in a spread of signals throughout the brain at a rate of around 10 cm per second.
By blocking the electrical field and increasing the distance between the cells in the computer model, the team found they could slow down the speed of the wave. This furthered their belief that the mild electrical field is in fact behind the propagation of these type of brain signals.
“Others have been working on this phenomena for decades, but no one has ever made these connections,” says Steven J. Schiff, director of the Center for Neural Engineering at Penn State University, who was not involved in the study. “The implications are that such directed fields can be used to modulate both pathological activities, such as seizures, and to interact with cognitive rhythms that help regulate a variety of processes in the brain.”
The research team says that the newly unearthed mechanism could be behind the spread of neural signals such as sleep and theta waves (those associated with memory formation during sleep), along with epileptic seizure waves, all of which travel at around 1 m per second. They are now exploring what part, if any, they play in epilepsy and regular brain function. If a role is established, they will seek to uncover what information the fields are carrying and where exactly they begin.
The research was published in The Journal of Neuroscience.
Source: Case Western Reserve University/EurekAlert
Ian: I have become very interested in cell signalling since I realised that perhaps the most valuable benefit of molecular hydrogen is in its ability to support cell signalling. For those of us not yet aware, cell signalling is what happens millions of times a minute in the supercomputer we call the body. It’s the process where one element of the body wants to ‘tell’ another part of the body something, e.g. ‘Move my left leg’. Contemplating this will soon lead you to a realisation of the massive number of messages our body processes along with the infinite complexity of organising this process of cell signalling.
I recently turned 69 and I drink my UltraStream hydrogen infused water every day, but to ‘up’ the H2 concentration, I first pour it from my UltraStream into a 350ml bottle, to the top, ad 2 x I LOVE H2 tablets that dissolve and release more hydrogen, so I have what some may call a ‘megadose’ of infused H2. I know from study and experience that the higher the concentration of H2 in my water, the more effect it has on my body.
How do I feel? Sharp as a tack. I work hard here at the AlkaWay office every day, and I do attribute that (at my age) to the effect molecular hydrogen has on my internal super computer.
If you’d like to know more about molecular hydrogen, go here, or download our 17 page report on the science of H2 here.