E338-BIOMEDICAL

INSTRUMENTATION
Problem 2

I am excited!

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Electrical Activity of Excitable Cells
• Bioelectric potentials are produced
as a result of electrochemical
activity of excitable cells.
• Four types of tissues are found in
a human body, these are:
• Epithelial, Connective, Muscle and
Neural tissues.

• Of the four tissue types, the

Muscle and the Neural tissues
are excitable
• i.e. they generate and respond to
electrical potentials

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Bioelectric signals from Muscle and
Neural cells

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Cells at their Resting State

• An excitable cell maintain a steady electrical voltage

between its internal and external environments.
• The source of this voltage (a.k.a. potential) is strictly
ionic in nature.
• The principal ions involved with the mechanism of
generating cell potentials are Sodium (Na+), Potassium
(K+ ) and Chloride (Cl- ) ions.
• This resultant potential is called the Resting Membrane
Potential (RMP) and a cell with such a potential is said
to be polarized.

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Resting Membrane Potential of an
excitable cell
+ + + +
+ - - +
- -
+ --
-70mV
- +
- -
+ - Intracellular - + V
-
+ -- -- +
- - - - Extracellular
+ +
+ + + +
Cell
membrane

• This static RMP remains constant until the cell is

disturbed or stimulated by some other action.

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Calculating the Membrane Potential
• So do we know the membrane
potential is approximately -
70mV?
The Goldman equation is a little
If only one type of ion more complicated because the
penetrates the membrane you ion permeability must be taken
can use the Nerst equation into account, but is used when
more then one type of ion is
involved.
PNa [C Na ]in  PCl [CCl ]out  PK [C K ]in
E  58mV log
C1 E  58 mV log
C2 PNa [C Na ]out  PCl [CCl ]in  PK [C K ]out

C represents concentration levels of a particular ion.

P represents the permeability of a particular ion.

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So what happens when nerve and
muscle cells are stimulated?

• The nerve and muscle cells can be stimulated by a

variety of stimuli such as heat flow, light, electricity,
mechanical deformation etc. which results in changes in
the cell membrane.

• When a cell receives a stimulus of some kind, the RMP

changes and this change is called an “ACTION
POTENTIAL”.

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The Action Potential
• caused by an exchange of ions across the neuron
membrane.

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The Action Potential Explained
a) A stimulus first causes sodium channels to
open. Because there are many more sodium
ions on the outside, and the inside of the
neuron is negative relative to the outside,
sodium ions rush into the neuron so the
neuron becomes more positive and becomes
depolarized.

b) It takes longer for potassium channels to

open. When they do open, potassium rushes
out of the cell, reversing the depolarization.

c) Also at about this time, sodium channels

start to close. This causes the action
potential to go back toward -70 mV (a
repolarization).

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The Movement of Ions during the
Action Potential
d) The action potential
actually goes past -70
mV (a hyperpolarization)
because the potassium
channels stay open a bit
too long.

e) Gradually, the ion

concentrations go back
to resting levels and the
cell returns to -70 mV.

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ALL or NOTHING Law
• If a stimulus is sufficiently high, the action potential, in
terms of response time and amplitude is always the
same.
• The minimum value of the stimulus required is called the
threshold of the cell.
• For an action potential to be produced a stimulus
greater than the threshold value must be applied.
• If not, action potential will not be generated at all.
• The stimulus amplitude has no effect on the shape of
the action potential generated.

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Conduction Of Action Potential
• The propagation of an action potential through a group of cells
is due to the activity of local circuit currents.
• This current flows from the inactive to the active areas of the
cells.
• It is large enough to cause depolarization in the vicinity of the
action potential which in turn cause subsequent
depolarisations of adjacent cells.

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Conduction Of Action Potential
• Since a typical organ such as the heart or the brain has
a number of excitable cells, there occurs a spatial-
temporal (i.e. spread across space and varying with
time) summation of all the action potentials arising due to
an internal or external stimulus.

• This spatial-temporal summation leads to (surprisingly)

consistent patterns of signals such as the:
• Electrocardiogram (ECG) from the heart
• Electroencephalogram (EEG) from the brain
• Electromyogram (EMG) from the skeletal muscles

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Conduction Of Action Potential
• These signals can be
recorded on the surface of
the body and they form the
most important sources of
information about the state
and health of not only the
specific organs but also the
life process itself.

• To acquire these signals we

use special transducers
known as “Electrodes”.

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Characteristics of common Biosignals

• Notice that these signals generally have Low Bandwidth and Low
Amplitude.
• What challenges would you face trying to acquire these signals?

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Learning Objectives
• Understand the Electrochemical Activities of Excitable
Cells.
• Understand the term “Resting Membrane Potential”.
• Using Nernst and Goldman equations to calculate
Membrane Potential.
• Understand the term Action Potential and how it is
generated.
• Understand the process resulting in conduction of Action
Potential.
• Principle of Biopotential Measurement.

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 Resources

• Webster, Medical Instrumentation: Application

and Design (3rd edition) : John Wiley & Sons Inc

• R. S. Khandpur, Biomedical Instrumentation:

Technology And Applications : McGraw-Hill

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