Neurophysics (or neurobiophysics) is the branch of biophysics dealing with the development and use of physical methods to gain information about the nervous system. Neurophysics is an interdisciplinary science using physics and combining it with other Neuroscience to better understand neural processes.
The methods used include the techniques of experimental biophysics and other physical measurements such as EEG
Among other examples, the theorisation of ectopic Action potential in neurons using a Kramers-Moyal expansion
Another quite distinct theoretical approach considers neurons as having Ising model energies of interaction and explores the physical consequences of this for various . In 1981, the exact solution for the closed Cayley tree (with loops) was derived by Peter Barth for an arbitrary branching ratio[ ] and found to exhibit an unusual phase transition behavior[ ] in its local-apex and long-range site-site correlations, suggesting that the emergence of structurally-determined and connectivity-influenced cooperative phenomena may play a significant role in large neural networks.
Recording techniques
Old techniques to record brain activity using physical phenomena are already widespread in
research and
medicine. Electroencephalography (EEG) uses electrophysiology to measure electrical activity within the brain. This technique, with which
Hans Berger first recorded brain electrical activity on a human in 1924,
is non-invasive and uses electrodes placed on the scalp of the patient to record brain activity. Based on the same principle, electrocorticography (ECoG) requires a
craniotomy to record electrical activity directly on the
cerebral cortex.
In the recent decades, physicists have come up with technologies and devices to image the brain and its activity. The Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) technique, discovered by Seiji Ogawa in 1990,
Theories of consciousness
Consciousness is still an unknown mechanism and theorists have yet to come up with physical hypotheses explaining its mechanisms. Some theories rely on the idea that consciousness could be explained by the disturbances in the cerebral electromagnetic field generated by the
Action potential triggered during brain activity.
These theories are called electromagnetic theories of consciousness. Another group of hypotheses suggest that consciousness cannot be explained by classical dynamics but with quantum mechanics and its phenomena. These hypotheses are grouped into the idea of
quantum mind and were first introduced by
Eugene Wigner.
Neurophysics institutes
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The Theoretical Neurophysics Laboratory, University of Bremen
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Department of Neurophysics, Max-Planck Institute
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Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Neurophysics group, Aarhus University
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W. M. Keck Center for Neurophysics, UCLA
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Neurophysics Program, Georgia State University
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Neurophysics at the Institute of Neurology, University College of London
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Neurophysics at Radboud University, Radboud University Nijmegen
Awards
Among the list of prizes that reward neurophysicists for their contribution to neurology and related fields, the most notable one is the Brain Prize, whose last laureates are
Adrian Bird and
Huda Zoghbi for "their groundbreaking work to map and understand epigenetic regulation of the brain and for identifying the gene that causes Rett syndrome".
The other most relevant prizes that can be awarded to a neurophysicist are: the NAS Award in the Neurosciences, the
Kavli Prize and to some extent the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It can be noted that a Nobel Prize was awarded to scientists that developed techniques which contributed widely to a better understanding of the nervous system, such as
Erwin Neher and
Bert Sakmann in 1991 for the
patch clamp, and also to
Paul Lauterbur and
Peter Mansfield for their work on Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in 2003.
See also
Books
