Neurophysiology

The neurophysiology deals in delineation of the vegetative physiology with the functioning of the nervous system, especially of the people, but also that of animals, and is thus both a branch of physiology and animal physiology as well as a branch of the younger discipline of neuroscience. The neurophysiology in turn can be divided into more specialized areas.

• Electrophysiology deals with the electrochemical signal transmission in the nervous system, the signal transduction;
• The sensory physiology with how the mechanisms of ( differently defined ) convert five human senses external stimuli ( stimuli), such as light waves, sound waves or chemical signals into electrical signals.

Subject of research in neurophysiology, among other neuronal activity and plasticity. The focus is on the dynamic processes both in the individual nerve cell and the whole networks of neurons, called neural networks, but also the integrative activity of various neural networks.

Clinical neurophysiology is concerned as a special field of human medicine, more precisely, neurology, with functional disorders of the human nervous system.

Methods

The most commonly used in neurophysiology study and research methods are the electrophysiology in the broadest sense. ( Individual methods qv).

Lately also imaging techniques have (also called (digital) imaging ( engl.) ) such as confocal microscopy, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI ) and the two- photon microscopy - primarily as fluorescence microscopic methods - important contributions to knowledge in the made neurophysiology.

Demarcation

Although the (animal) physiology is a subdiscipline of biology, you follow in the Neurosciences not this system, but is a separate sub- discipline Neurophysiology next to neurobiology. This is due to the significantly different priorities of the two disciplines. So the neurobiology explores the molecular and cell biological foundations of neuroscience, non-neuronal activities (at least not in the first place (! ), But that cell biology is concerned as well as electrophysiology, to a lesser extent also with the communication between cells (signal transduction, see above) ).

Other sister disciplines of neurophysiology, for example, Cognitive neuroscience and neurochemistry.