Resting Membrane & Action Potential
Dr. Matt and Dr. Mike's Medical Podcast
Dr. Mike Todorovic
4.8 • 743 Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2017
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In order for our neurons to fire off, heart muscle to contract, and kidneys to reabsorb substances, the cells in our body need to establish charge and concentration differences between the inside of the cell and outside the cell (resting membrane potential). In this episode, we explore how our body creates these differences and exploit them to send signals to and from the brain (action potential). We also discuss what can happen to the body if we alter these concentrations and charges.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome everybody to another episode of Dr. Matt and Dr. Mike's medical podcast. I'm Dr. Mike. |
| 0:06.3 | Unfortunately, Dr. Matt is not with us today in this episode and the reason why is because |
| 0:10.4 | he's such an altruistic guy that he's decided to head off to India and teach nursing students |
| 0:17.4 | and medical students clinical anatomy. So cataveric specimens, teaching them |
| 0:23.0 | different organ systems, dissection techniques, certain anatomical locations, and then obviously |
| 0:28.2 | some of the clinical correlates of knowing those particular anatomical locations. So that's where |
| 0:33.3 | Mattie is, but that's good. It's good for you. It's good for me. The reason why is because |
| 0:37.1 | we're not going to get interrupted by Matt today, thankfully. He's good. It's good for you. It's good for me. The reason why is because we're not |
| 0:37.7 | going to get interrupted by Matt today. Thankfully, he's not going to say, hey, Michael, let's just |
| 0:42.9 | pause for a minute and let's go back and talk about it. No, it's not happening. It's all me, baby. |
| 0:49.0 | And what we're going to talk about today is resting membrane potential and action potentials and nervous transmission. So that's a lot. |
| 0:57.6 | And it doesn't sound interesting. It is interesting. It is something that many med students, |
| 1:02.2 | many nursing students, many health students in general really have troubles with understanding |
| 1:08.5 | what an action potential is. And the basis to this podcast today is trying to understand how when I touch the table that |
| 1:16.4 | I'm sitting at, or when I see you or hear a friend speak or decide to do a dance or speak |
| 1:22.6 | for myself or any of this, the whole reason for it to happen, the whole way that it can occur is because |
| 1:30.8 | of action potentials. Now, an action potential is just sodium ions rushing into a neuron in a |
| 1:37.3 | domino-like fashion, starting at the start, moving towards the end. So if I touch the table with my |
| 1:43.1 | index finger, I'm stimulating a receptor. |
| 1:46.3 | This receptor is then telling the neuron inside my finger to throw sodium ions into that cell |
| 1:52.2 | in a domino-like fashion all the way up my arm into my spine, up my spinal cord to my thalmus, |
| 1:58.7 | from my thelmus to my cortex. That's all it is. Basically, if you |
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