Beta Rhythm (Music of the Mind)

From Paul Greengard's Nobel Lecture in 2000 : It is estimated that there are about 100 billion nerve cells in the brain and that on average each of these nerve cells communicates with 1000 other nerve cells. A vigorous debate went on from the 1930s through the 1960s as to whether intercellular communication across the synapses between nerve cells was electrical or chemical in nature. The electrical school of thought held that the nerve impulse or action potential was propagated along the axon to the nerve ending, changed the electrical field across the postsynaptic plasma membrane, and thereby produced a physiological response. The chemical school believed that when the action potential came down the axon to the nerve terminal, it caused the fusion of neuro-transmitter-containing vesicles with the presynaptic plasma membrane, releasing a neurotransmitter, which then diffused across the synaptic cleft and, through activation of a (hypothetical) receptor, produced a physiological res...