Electrophysiology

Electrophysiology studies electrical properties and signals in biological cells and tissues, including how ion movement produces voltage changes and how those signals can be measured.

Membrane potential: The voltage difference between the inside and outside of a cell membrane. It is the electrical state that recordings track as cells respond or fire.
Electrocardiography: The recording and interpretation of electrical activity produced by the heart. It applies electrophysiological recording to cardiac activity at the body's surface.
Electrochemical gradient: The combined chemical and electrical force that drives an ion across a membrane. It determines the direction and strength of ion flow underlying cellular signals.
Luigi Galvani: An Italian physician whose experiments linked electricity with muscular contraction in animals. His frog-muscle observations helped establish bioelectricity as an experimental subject.
Single-unit recording: A method that records action potentials from one neuron using a nearby electrode. It resolves individual neural firing rather than summed population activity.
Ion channel: A membrane protein that permits selected ions to cross a cell membrane. Channel opening and closing generates many cellular currents and voltage changes.
Electroencephalography: The recording of brain electrical activity using electrodes placed on the scalp or brain. It captures summed neural signals for clinical assessment and research.
Nernst equation: An equation that calculates an ion's equilibrium potential from its concentrations across a membrane. It predicts the voltage at which that ion has no net movement.
Emil du Bois-Reymond: A German physiologist who demonstrated electrical phenomena in nerves and muscles. His measurements helped turn animal electricity into quantitative physiology.
Local field potential: A low-frequency extracellular voltage reflecting summed activity near a recording electrode. It contrasts population-level signals with recordings of individual spikes.

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