Book Review: We Are Electric by Sally Adee, Allen&Unwin 2023

I'm interested in science's blind-spots and forgotten ideas. Things we knew but which were forgotten; thing we know but have become unfashionable to mention.

So when I recently read about Tufts Professor Michael Levin and his amazing research on how electrical charge helps determines organism development, I wanted to read more about the role of electricity in biology. So I borrowed a book from the local library by UK Science journalist Sally Adee, titled We are Electric.

THE DEFENSIVE

Any review of a forgotten and unfashionable idea needs to start on the defensive. Ideas are unfashionable for a reason, and in the case of electricity there are two main reasons.

1. Electricity is seen as being for machines not people. The author does a great job in describing the 18th century rivalry between Volta and Galvani and how Volta's triumph cemented the idea that thinking electricity was important in biology is embarrassing.
2. There's a lot of super-dodgy people out there selling dodgy treatments based on electricity.

These observations do not preclude electricity being important in biology.

IONS

The basic observation is that the body uses differences in charge all the time to send signals. Calcium, Sodium and Potassium ions are constantly shooting back and forth across the membranes of cells and of organelles to create voltage differences.

Basically ion channels let ions move, creating voltage differences across membranes that can be seen as equivalent to the way batteries work. As a result human bodies have an electrical signature. We have long known it mattered in nerve cells. We can measure it in hearts (ECG) and brains (EEG). And now we can see it in almost all other cells.

Cells that have specific purposes have certain voltages, while stem cells and cancer cells tend to have a voltage of zero.

DEVELOPMENT

The researcher I mentioned, Michael Levin, first saw that embryonic cells changed their electrical potential before they developed into features. He then managed to grow eyes on a frog's back by affecting the electrical potential of those cells. His preferred analogy is that DNA is hardware and electricity is the software that tells the hardware what to do.

One of the theses of the book is that post Watson and Crick we focused on DNA for most of a century. The genome matters a lot. It holds the cure to some diseases. But it isn't quite, in the end, the defining answer to all of biology.

Sadly, there's a lot of complex epigenetics that determines what cells do. Electrical charge is one of them. (Obviously electric charge depends on proteins made by DNA, nobody's saying electricity is the boss of DNA, just that the systems coexist and inter-relate in ways we have not yet untangled).

I'm reminded of how the ascendancy of germ theory helped us "forget" the cure for scurvy for a while.

CAN WE ZAP THINGS?

Using mechanical electricity (electron flows) to rectify these ionic voltage differences has shown a little bit of promise. It does affect cells but there's a mismatch between machine electricity and biological electricity, simply zapping things doesn't work well often.

WHAT ABOUT MECFS?

The nano-needle work that measures cellular impedance changes suggest there could be some electrical difference in mecfs but that work is certainly not clear, nor is it replicated, and neither is there any suggestion the difference in charge is upstream; perhaps it is merely a sign of a membrane problem that has a immune-based explanation.

The calcium channel work out of Griffth university might point in a similar direction but I'm skeptical of that too.

To conclude, I don't think "electricity is the explanation" is a helpful thing to say or think in mecfs.

SO WHY POST THIS POST?

What is definitely interesting is to see the way an idea can become unfashionable. How social models help explain the ideas that become dominant and attract excitement.

It makes me wonder if there's research models out there that seem exciting and relevant but which we should recognise aren't leading anywhere (untargeted metabolomics?!?) Or an old, dessicated theory out there somewhere that might help explain mecfs, but just isn't sufficiently ... current (pun intended).

https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Sally-Adee-We-Are-Electric-9781838853341
https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/02/michael-levin-bioelectricity/

 

Thanks for posting your thoughts, @Murph. I think I agree with your conclusion! The idea needs to be fleshed out quite a bit - which phenomena related to electrical potentials are abnormal in PwMES and why do they result in ME symptoms specifically?

There is some neuroscience work on neuroinflammation that makes use of concepts to do with electrical potentials. For example, the chain of events triggered by traumatic brain injury might be partly shaped by the changes in intra/extra-cellular electrical potentials that occur when neurons respond to cell damage (calcium rushes into cells, interfering with cell metabolism, and potassium is released into the extracellular fluid, which causes nearby blood vessels to constrict).

 

This is certainly a very interesting area @Murph.

Mike Levin's work on the role of cellular electrical potentials in morphogenesis is fascinating. However, he and I have different views on the role of electromagnetic phenomena in our perceptions and experiences, which we have debated.

The physics
The starting point, maybe, is that all biology is electrical because all chemistry is based on electromagnetic interaction. The only bit of the world that isn't is the nucleus with its other forces. So, actually, scientists are all agreed that are lives are electrical.

But it is a bit more complicated. Electrical phenomena outside the nucleus depend on two fields. One is the electromagnetic field, which looks a bit like a meteorology wind chart with every point having four vector values - which together define direction, strength, and a sort of 'spin' factor (the 'magnetic' bit). The pattern of this field evolves by jumps through spacetime called photons. The other is the electron field, which for life on earth consists of something more like a Christmas decoration made of vastly complex three dimensional paper chains made of Möbius strips - which are the electron orbitals.

Electrical current is due to -ve charges shifting from one Möbius strip to the next. The 'discovery of electricity' was really about discovering currents. The jumps of the electromagnetic field, photons, had of course been known about since the Stone Age, as light (and later also as radio waves). People knew that light was essential for life but only in the nineteenth century did it begin to become clear how light, charge shifts and chemistry relate. The two fields are totally interlocked so that jumps in one always go with shifts in the other - but with a little bit of randomness thrown in to spice things up.

The biology
Levin's work is important because he has shown that the way cells signal to each other (at longer range than just chemical reaction) using electricity is not just confined to neurons in brains. A cell moves some charges around, which alters the EM field, and another cell picks up the shift in electromagnetic pattern. For neurons the patterns they see are hugely complex because each of thousands of synapses can create a tiny local shift in EM potential. For Levin's tadpole cells (and also plant cells) a few shifts are probably spread over larger surfaces.

Whether Levin's work tells us something new about mature human biology is a bit less clear. We already know that nerve cells talk to muscle cells using EM shifts associated with movements of charges (Ca ions). Lymphocytes talk to each other through 'synapses' but in general each cell only uses one synapse and although electromagnetism is involved throughout and again Ca and other ions go in and out, the story is probably adequately described chemically. But maybe there is more to learn.

Perception and symptoms
Where Levin and I disagree is the way EM patterns relate to perception. Levin, like some neuroscientists like Karl Friston, would like to see EM patterns across a whole organism, or at least maybe a brain relate to the 'sentience' of the 'organism'. The soul would enjoy EM patterns stretching out across many cells. I am convinced that this is not possible. The patterns can only be used by each cell to 'listen' to its neighbours. Which of course means that there must be lots and lots of cellular souls and no big soul. Which most people find hard to understand but I can only apologise for that and say it has to be so!

In my picture all symptoms in all diseases are ultimately felt by brain cells and are coded in EM potential patterns at synapses. Something charged within the cell then responds to those patterns. So, We Are Electric. But I am not sure that helps a lot with ME/CFS because those patterns can be determined, indirectly, by movements of charges anywhere in the body - eyes, muscles, lymphocytes or whatever, information being relayed from nerve to nerve until you get to the brain cell.

Nevertheless, it may be that EM patterns interact with things that we so far have not got a grip on. Maybe like activation of genes for Long Non-Coding RNAs that wind themselves around DNA, as we have discussed on another thread. Maybe there are ways of communicating between cells that we don't yet understand and maybe they are crucial to ME/CFS.

 

Are the currently known ways EM and chemical, i.e. through physical ‘messengers’ like Ca? Physical might not be the correct term.

 

They are all EM. Chemical signalling depends on EM field patterns over distances of a few nanometers - in essence the shape of molecular key that fits a molecular lock. But neurons respond to patterns over domains up to a millimetre (a billion times bigger). At that scale it no longer matters whether you have a calcium or a sodium ion or a GABA transmitter. The 'grain' of the pattern is in microns (a thousand times bigger than chemical).

A number of people have been attracted by the idea that different neurotransmitters might give 'flavours' to our experiences. Dopamine might make you feel fired up, EACh might make you feel low. But although these transmitters will lead to these feelings it cannot be because of the chemical flavour because the signalling the cell as a whole perceives is at the much larger EM field scale where chemical nature is invisible.

 

I can’t say that I understand any more about how signalling between neurons works. And I don’t think I’ve got the energy to read up on it to even have a chance of understanding.

Thank you for explaining, though! It made me aware of how little I already know about this topic.

 

You would be in good company. A lot of neuroscientists are not very clear.

 

I haven't read the book, but I'm guessing that it's misapplying EM theory to make dramatic--but false--claims. From what I know, cells aren't communicating with each other via EM signals. Ion movement generates EM signals, but cells don't have a way to strongly couple that energy to affect physical changes. Applying a voltage across some tissue via electrodes is not the same as coupling the tiny amount of EM energy generated by ions moving in a cell.

That's the basis of all those flaky science books: "You can't prove that colored light can't cure cancer, so buy my book and special treatment equipment (an ordinary light bulb and colored plastic) and cure yourself!". That's probably a significant drain on ME research funding too: some nonsense that sounds good to a science-ignorant fund manager. Yes, there are still surprises to be found in the scientific world, but I think that unless there are physical observations that can't be explained by existing theories, we shouldn't go chasing unicorns. Scientists didn't want to believe in "spooky action at a distance", but the observational evidence did point to it, and careful testing showed that it was real. I'm unaware of any similar evidence for "spooky communication between cells".

 

If you look at Levin's work it seems pretty certain that they do. One cell allows some ion flux and that shifts a voltage that is picked up by the next cell along. Neurons are certainly not the only cells to do this. Muscle cells do, and maybe secretory glandular cells, probably others. Plant cells probably do - most obviously in Mimosa. Ionic shifts in and out of cells can produce voltage gradients of something like 100,000V/cm if I remember rightly. A nearby cell can use that to open its own gates, phosphorylate proteins and various other things.And all chemistry is EM so it is really just a question of the domain range.

I agree that beyond the work on embryogenesis there may be nothing very new about all this. The book may well be going at a tangent. If it picks up Levin[s idea about organismal sentience lying in multicellular patterns I think it will do, but who knows?

It is also the basis for several recent Nobel price winning discoveries in cell communication including things like extracellular vesicles, micro and LNC RNAs, electromechanical coupling in cochlear hair cells and all sorts.

Well, what about the time course of PEM? And most of the other features of ME/CFS for that matter. I don't know of any theory based on known mechanisms that makes much sense for these yet.

It was realising that complement components can lead to paradoxical signalling with small immune complexes that led us to an explanation for RA. Quite a useful unicorn that was!

Well actually no. 'Spooky action at a distance' is something popular in the popular science literature that has never been demonstrated and was never necessary to explain the behaviour of quantum systems, including entangled photon pairs. The explanation is something quite different that relies on rejecting naive intuitive realism. 'Action at a distance' is only needed if you believe space and time are 'really like' how they seem. But even Plato knew that how things seem is mostly a trick of your brain's inference systems.

 

I continue to be amazed how the evolution discovered electricity or invented neural network hundreds of millions of years before humans did. I wouldn't know how it would relate to ME/CFS though, other than saying that everything in biology has an electrical aspect to it.

Do you mean by "soul" something that recognizes the pattern? The light at the end of a perceptron would constitute the soul in that case. Individual cells/connections wouldn't be souls since they are nothing more than switches/dials.

 

I think perceptrons relate to artificial neural networks, which are nothing much like networks of actual neurones. Each neuron receives a vastly complex pattern of inputs. In a computer a gate only gets a 0 and a 1. In the brain there is no light at the point where an EM field pattern represents the world in the dendritic tree of a neuron. There will notionally be photons mediating a spike response to the pattern but at a fundamental level the field coupling is more complicated than that. And even if the photons provided the information something would need to be informed for there to be any point in providing it. Presumably some dynamic unit within the neuron associated with charge is influenced by an EM pattern.

So yes, when I use the historic term 'soul' I am meaning whatever is informed by the EM pattern and as such 'experiences' it in the way we are familiar with.

 

AI neural networks use nodes, which are different from the gates in the chip of a computer. Nodes are purely software that’s run in the hardware (gates).

In theory, nodes can have far more inputs and outputs than neurons. Computing power is the limiting factor.

 

Yes, but if they have no physical existence and are merely simulated with gates then nodes cannot actually receive any inputs at all. As you say, they are simply instruction manual symbols. For signals to be experienced there actually have to be some of that sort of physical signal.

I had a long chat with Lenore Blum who has built a system that simulates a brain using nodes, but it operates through binary hardware. She would like to see it being conscious in virtue of having a 'global workspace' but a global workspace in a brain is just masses and masses of cells all getting similar patterns of inputs. Only cells get inputs. In computers only gates get inputs.

 

This is why the book review starts on the defensive ! People are strongly repelled by the idea of electricity in biology.

Among the ways they do it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gap_junction

Among the cool things explained by electric charge is how embryos work out left from right, placing the organs on the correct side in almost all cases: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4244194/

 

One thing Levin won't stop talking about is the idea that electric charges predate neurons by a long way and are a more ancient way of coordinating and arranging things. They're present in algae, for example.

I'm with him up to that point but he proceeds to talk about electricity as a form of intelligence, which imo is an error mode present in people who got praised a lot for being intelligent - they think any important system is a type of intelligence.

 

The "light" reference was more of pun to light going off in your head. In reality it's more like positive voltage, an analog output, when the pattern is recognized by perceptron. Sure, computer and brain are not the same thing and brain probably still is vastly more complex. But the brain's neural circuitry works on the same principle: patterns are recognized, fed into something else and responded internally or externally.

Some people talk about qualia or such, but that's such a non-scientific term. I'd even go as far as saying it's just a human delusion. All that's going on is the environment sensed, processed, buttons pushed, strings pulled, and responded. Humans perceive it as taste, love, pain or happiness when all that's happening is certain portion of the brain light up.

edit: grammar

 

I haven't read his work, but that is probably true. Neurons are present only in animals with motor functions. But plants also utilize electricity, as part of biochemical response, to respond to its environment.

 

Modern AI is getting impressively powerful, imo. Some already sport over a trillion of parameters (connections), compared to human brain that have tens of trillions of connections. What would happen when they have quadrillions and clever unsupervised learning? Inquiring mind wants to know...

 

I agree this is where Levin goes off beam. Although if 'intelligence' means ability to respond appropriately to a wide range of stimuli then that isn't too far from what important systems do, whether made of cells or silicon. The mistake for me is to equate this to consciousness and 'thoughts'.

 

There is nothing in a computer that recognises a pattern.There cannot be because there are no places where patterns are presented or made available. This is a simple physical fact. The only place where a pattern might be recognised is in the hereof the programmer. A computer can simulate pattern recognition in that it can produce appropriate outputs that are informed by whole patterns but it does that by interrogating individual bits of the pattern and using computational manoeuvres that can derive a mathematically correct response from a series of such one bit interrogations.

So the brain's 'circuitry' is not the same in principle at all. (They aren't even electrical circuits. Unlike a computer where the voltage sources come from external batteries or power lines in brains steps are mediated by locally generated voltages and also by chemical diffusions.)

You couldn't be more wrong there. Maybe you have never studied the physiology of perception? The most crucial step-in understanding perception is the recognition that words like 'red' have two completely different meanings. One describes a disjunctive set of dispositional dynamic properties in world events being studied, such as preferentially transmitting, emitting or reflecting light at 650nm (all different physics) or that of actually being light at 650nm, all sharing a disposition defined ultimately by stimulating some retinal cones more than others. The other is the quale red, which is a manifest property of an event deep in the brain that has nothing whatever to do with the previous dispositional properties as far as we know. Not scientific? Well, it was hard science to Sir Colin Blakemore, one time head of the UK Medical Research Council and someone I discussed perception with often in our shared neuroscience and philosophy seminars at University of London Senate House.