A Shocking Idea - Nerves Might Run on Sound

Wiregrass Willie

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Sat Sep-22-07 07:38 AM
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A Shocking Idea - Nerves Might Run on Sound

This is not political, but it is my experience that people intelligent enough to be interested in politics often are interested in other things.

With that thought, I offer this article :

A Shocking Idea: Nerves Might Run on Sound, Not Electricity
Brandon Keim Email 06.11.07 | 2:00 AM

Most people know that nerves work by passing electrical currents from cell to cell. But you might be surprised to learn that no one knows exactly how anesthetics stop nerves from carrying pain signals.

That's why two scientists believe that we really don’t know how nerves work after all.

According to their controversial theory, electricity is just a side effect of how nerves really operate: by conducting high-density waves of pressure that resemble sound reverberating through a pipe.

"Nerves are supposed to work like a series of electrical transistors," said Andrew Jackson, a physicist at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. "This picture is at best flawed."

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/06/nerve_communication

I think the Sound Theory opens up a way of explaining things that have been unexplainable. I've tried to accept the notion that everything in the Universe is based (in some way) on electric impulses. But that's nonsense. What was the first event in the history of the Universe ? The Big Bang. So Noise was the Genesis of all life as we know it. That certainly indicates it probably could still be the motivating force behind all living things in the universe and on the Earth. Surely that Big bang has not grown entirely silent. Maybe it must still be ricocheting through the Universe - passing along it's ancient wisdom.

I think science is guilty of being a victim of answer to this old question -- "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a noise" ? Answer "No!". But just because we don't hear it is no sign that a noise does not exist which may be heard by other living creatures.

I would propose that something in the living cell has receptors that can hear and process sound to the benefit of the host organism. Take the woodpeckers that left my yard last week for the first time since March. How did they know winter is approaching and it was time to head South ? All my life I have heard inane reasons like --

(1) instinct (2) the days are getting shorter (3) solar impulse received by their brain.

Obviously it is "none of the above". How can a bird know the days are getting shorter if I have trouble noticing that fact ? Do they check their watches periodically ? Do they watch the Weather Channel ?

No ! But they could be hearing noise that is telling them to head South. Where would that noise be processed ? In the brain or in the cells ?

Suicides have always puzzled me. Why do people throw away their most valued possession ? Reading a biography of an author whose work I respect, I learned that the reason he killed himself was because he had been hearing voices that told him to do so. His book had just been received to great reviews, he had everything to live for and as he was preparing to meet his publishers. He went into a bedroom and shot himself. We always dismiss "voices" as a sure sign of insanity.
And well they may be. BUT -- maybe they are also sometimes picked up by sensitive brains from an outside source we don't understand.

Perhaps having ears prevents us from picking up the quieter noise heard by lower orders.

Think of all the sounds around us that we can't hear unless we have the proper listening device. Such as a radio or TV. Maybe living cells have a built in device.

Actually I have no answers at all. But I would love to see a modern day Newton or Galileo pick up this subject. I really think there is something there that will open up a new world of understanding. And possibly even the much sought after
"fourth dimension".

Please pardon the meandering. I may be a "searcher after truth" -- but mine is not a scientific mind.

Willie