Todd, Faraday and the electrical basis of brain activity.
The origins of our understanding of brain electricity and electrical discharges in epilepsy can be traced to Robert Bentley Todd (1809-60). Todd was influenced by his contemporary in London, Michael Faraday (1791-1867), who in the 1830 s and 1840 s was laying the foundations of our modern understanding of electromagnetism. Todd's concept of nervous polarity, generated in nerve vesicles and transmitted in nerve fibres (neurons in later terminology), was confirmed a century later by the Nobel Prize-winning work of Hodgkin and Huxley, who demonstrated the ionic basis of neuro-transmission, involving the same ions which had had been discovered by Faraday's mentor, Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829).
Reynolds
Edward
E
Institute of Epileptology, King's College School of Medicine, Weston Education Centre, Denmark Hill Campus, Cutcombe Road, London SE5 6PJ, UK. reynolds@buckles.u-net.com
D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004560:Electricity / Q000266:history*; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D009462:Neurology / Q000266:history* / Q000379:methods; D009482:Neurophysiology / Q000266:history* / Q000295:instrumentation*