49 articles
Articles.
BioelectricityVoltage, current and field as signals in living tissue, from animal electricity to pattern memory.
Spatial voltage pattern across a tissue that predicts and guides later anatomy.
Tumour formation tied to cell membrane voltage and cell-to-cell communication, not oncogenes alone.
Electrical current between injured and intact tissue, and its fall during activity, the negative variation.
Shifts of membrane voltage toward or away from zero, read first as excitation and later as tissue signals.
Voltage changes recorded from nervous tissue, first as evoked potentials and spontaneous oscillations in animal cortex.
Early twentieth century measures of how salts and injury change tissue resistance, conductivity and permeability.
The electrical change that accompanies excitation in nerve, muscle and plant tissue.
Directed movement of cells and animals in an electric current, toward the anode or cathode.
Membrane channels joining neighbouring cells that pass ions and small molecules, and so carry voltage.
Membrane proteins that move ions and set the voltage cells use as a signal.
Serotonin and related molecules signal in embryos, regenerating worms, plants and sponges that have no nervous system.
The steady voltage across a cell membrane, studied as a signal as well as a background for firing.
BioenergeticsHow cells obtain, store and spend energy: gradients, membranes, mitochondria, metabolism; and the line from Szent-Györgyi and Ling to Ray Peat.
Electron transfer pumps protons across a membrane, and the gradient drives ATP synthesis.
Green tissue uses light to turn carbon dioxide into sugar, storing solar energy for life.
How a cell's energy-yielding reactions shape its behaviour, development and the choice between glycolysis and respiration.
The electrical part of the proton-motive force across the inner mitochondrial membrane, and what it drives.
Electron flow along the respiratory chain to oxygen drives proton pumping and ATP synthesis in mitochondria.
Reactive oxygen molecules that signal at low levels and damage cells at high levels.
Nasonov's protein-denaturation account of excitation and damage, set beside questions about protons and the bulk phase.
Morphogenesis and formHow bodies acquire and repair their shape: embryology, regeneration, fields, gradients.
Graded differences in metabolic rate along a body axis, proposed by Child as the basis of polarity.
Consistent difference between the sides of a bilateral body, and the signals that set it.
Ultraweak ultraviolet light from living cells, once said to trigger cell division in neighbouring cells.
A developmental concept for self-organizing patterning domains, discussed alongside positional information and electric fields.
How surface tension, pressure and mechanical stress have been proposed to shape cells and tissues.
The asymmetry of a body, tissue or cell along an axis, and what sets and keeps it.
Restoration of lost body parts, studied as nuclear, gradient, signalling and bioelectric control of pattern.
Self-motile proto-organisms built from frog skin cells that replicate by gathering loose cells.
The anatomical form a tissue works to build and restore, treated as a stored setpoint.
Minds of small thingsBehaviour, memory and decision in cells, tissues and simple animals.
Memory, learning and problem solving studied in cells, tissues and organisms that have no brain.
How amoebae, ciliates and other single cells move, feed, regenerate and learn without nerves.
Revolving growth movement of plant organs, treated by Darwin as the base of directed movements.
Groups of cells treated as problem solvers that pursue shared anatomical goals.
A response that a formerly neutral stimulus comes to trigger after repeated pairing with an effective one.
Observable signs, such as fitting action or learning, proposed for deciding whether an organism has mind.
How the single-celled Physarum plasmodium forages, chooses routes and shows learning without a nervous system.
Habit is a settled way of acting. Plasticity is the capacity to change it without breaking.
Flatworms that regenerate heads and brains, and a thin record of learning and stored form.
Darwin's statement that the tip of the radicle acts like a brain, and related views.
Behavior by varied movements, keeping those that relieve the organism. Jennings's term, disputed by others.
Directed movement of an organism set by the direction of light, gravity or other agents.
Goals and controlGoal-directedness, feedback, autonomy and the logic of living organisation.
Reaching a typical end by flexible means, once called teleology, now studied in cells and tissues.
The spatial and temporal reach of goals a system can pursue, which defines its self.
The dispute over whether life needs a special force or reduces to physics and chemistry.
Evolution and evolvabilityVariation, plasticity, inheritance beyond genes, and how novelty arises.
Variation that falls into separate groups with gaps between them, rather than shading smoothly from one form to the next.
How variation and selection reshape living systems, and why biological systems do so readily.
Physiology and the whole organismThe organism as an integrated system, its internal milieu and its built world.
A salt harmful alone is made less harmful by another; balanced mixtures protect living cells.
The view that living responses follow from definite conditions, tested by experiment.
Plant bending toward or away from light and gravity, and how the sense can change.
Stability of an organism's inner conditions, from Bernard's milieu intérieur to setpoints for anatomy.