Life / Neuroscience & Psychology

Nerves run on electricity

Luigi Galvani showed that frog muscles twitch under electrical stimulation, so nerve signals are electrical.

In the 1780s and 1790s Luigi Galvani found that electricity makes dissected frog legs twitch, and he argued for 'animal electricity'. Alessandro Volta disagreed, which led to the battery, but in the 1840s Emil du Bois-Reymond measured the electrical signals of nerves and muscles with a galvanometer. The brain and nerves were now seen as a physical, electrical system.