Neuroscience · 1952
A Quantitative Description of Membrane Current and Its Application to Conduction and Excitation in Nerve
Alan L. Hodgkin, Andrew F. Huxley
Overview
Hodgkin and Huxley built the first quantitative, predictive model of the nerve impulse. Measuring ionic currents in the squid giant axon, they derived equations that reproduce the action potential from the dynamics of sodium and potassium channels.
Founded computational and cellular neuroscience; won the 1963 Nobel Prize.
Key findings
Methods
Voltage-clamp experiments on the squid giant axon isolated ionic currents at controlled membrane voltages; the data were fitted to a system of differential equations describing conductance changes over time.
Keywords
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