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Concept
Bioelectromagnetics
Summary
Bioelectromagnetics, also known as bioelectromagnetism, is the study of the interaction between electromagnetic fields and biological entities. Areas of study include electromagnetic fields produced by living cells, tissues or organisms, the effects of man-made sources of electromagnetic fields like mobile phones, and the application of electromagnetic radiation toward therapies for the treatment of various conditions.
Bioelectromagnetism is studied primarily through the techniques of electrophysiology. In the late eighteenth century, the Italian physician and physicist Luigi Galvani first recorded the phenomenon while dissecting a frog at a table where he had been conducting experiments with static electricity. Galvani coined the term animal electricity to describe the phenomenon, while contemporaries labeled it galvanism. Galvani and contemporaries regarded muscle activation as resulting from an electrical fluid or substance in the nerves. Short-lived electrical events called action potentials occur in several types of animal cells which are called excitable cells, a category of cell include neurons, muscle cells, and endocrine cells, as well as in some plant cells. These action potentials are used to facilitate inter-cellular communication and activate intracellular processes. The physiological phenomena of action potentials are possible because voltage-gated ion channels allow the resting potential caused by electrochemical gradient on either side of a cell membrane to resolve..
Several animals are suspected to have the ability to sense electromagnetic fields; for example, several aquatic animals have structures potentially capable of sensing changes in voltage caused by a changing magnetic field, while migratory birds are thought to use magnetoreception in navigation.
Most of the molecules in the human body interact weakly with electromagnetic fields in the radio frequency or extremely low frequency bands. One such interaction is absorption of energy from the fields, which can cause tissue to heat up; more intense fields will produce greater heating.
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