Bioelectromagnetics, also known as bioelectromagnetism, is the study of the interaction between

electromagnetic field An electromagnetic field (also EM field or EMF) is a classical (i.e. non-quantum) field produced by (stationary or moving) electric charges. It is the field described by classical electrodynamics (a classical field theory) and is the classical c ...

s and biological entities. Areas of study include

s produced by living

cell Cell most often refers to: * Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life Cell may also refer to: Locations * Monastic cell, a small room, hut, or cave in which a religious recluse lives, alternatively the small precursor of a monastery ...

s, tissues or

organism In biology, an organism () is any living system that functions as an individual entity. All organisms are composed of cells (cell theory). Organisms are classified by taxonomy into groups such as multicellular animals, plants, and ...

s, the effects of man-made sources of electromagnetic fields like

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

s, and the application of electromagnetic radiation toward therapies for the treatment of various conditions.

Biological phenomena

Bioelectromagnetism is studied primarily through the techniques of

electrophysiology Electrophysiology (from Greek , ''ēlektron'', "amber" etymology of "electron"">Electron#Etymology">etymology of "electron" , ''physis'', "nature, origin"; and , '' -logia'') is the branch of physiology that studies the electrical properties of b ...

. In the late eighteenth century, the

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

and

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

Luigi Galvani Luigi Galvani (, also ; ; la, Aloysius Galvanus; 9 September 1737 – 4 December 1798) was an Italian physician, physicist, biologist and philosopher, who studied animal electricity. In 1780, he discovered that the muscles of dead frogs' legs ...

first recorded the phenomenon while dissecting a

frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely Carnivore, carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order (biology), order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-f ...

at a table where he had been conducting experiments with

static electricity Static electricity is an imbalance of electric charges within or on the surface of a material or between materials. The charge remains until it is able to move away by means of an electric current or electrical discharge. Static electricity is na ...

. Galvani coined the term ''animal electricity'' to describe the phenomenon, while contemporaries labeled it

galvanism Galvanism is a term invented by the late 18th-century physicist and chemist Alessandro Volta to refer to the generation of electric current by chemical action. The term also came to refer to the discoveries of its namesake, Luigi Galvani, specif ...

. Galvani and contemporaries regarded muscle activation as resulting from an electrical fluid or substance in the

nerve A nerve is an enclosed, cable-like bundle of nerve fibers (called axons) in the peripheral nervous system. A nerve transmits electrical impulses. It is the basic unit of the peripheral nervous system. A nerve provides a common pathway for the e ...

s. Short-lived electrical events called

action potentials An action potential occurs when the membrane potential of a specific cell location rapidly rises and falls. This depolarization then causes adjacent locations to similarly depolarize. Action potentials occur in several types of animal cells, c ...

occur in several types of animal cells which are called excitable cells, a category of cell include neurons, muscle cells, and endocrine cells, as well as in some plant cells. These action potentials are used to facilitate inter-cellular communication and activate intracellular processes. The physiological phenomena of action potentials are possible because

voltage-gated ion channel Voltage-gated ion channels are a class of transmembrane proteins that form ion channels that are activated by changes in the electrical membrane potential near the channel. The membrane potential alters the conformation of the channel proteins, ...

s allow the resting potential caused by

electrochemical gradient An electrochemical gradient is a gradient of electrochemical potential, usually for an ion that can move across a membrane. The gradient consists of two parts, the chemical gradient, or difference in solute concentration across a membrane, and th ...

on either side of a cell membrane to resolve.. Several animals are suspected to have the ability to sense electromagnetic fields; for example, several aquatic animals have structures potentially capable of sensing changes in voltage caused by a changing magnetic field, while migratory birds are thought to use

magnetoreception Magnetoreception is a sense which allows an organism to detect the Earth's magnetic field. Animals with this sense include some arthropods, molluscs, and vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, though not humans). The se ...

in navigation. Rock Pigeon Columba livia

Bioeffects of electromagnetic radiation

Most of the molecules in the human body interact weakly with

electromagnetic fields An electromagnetic field (also EM field or EMF) is a classical (i.e. non-quantum) field produced by (stationary or moving) electric charges. It is the field described by classical electrodynamics (a classical field theory) and is the classical co ...

in the

radio frequency Radio frequency (RF) is the oscillation rate of an alternating electric current or voltage or of a magnetic, electric or electromagnetic field or mechanical system in the frequency range from around to around . This is roughly between the upp ...

extremely low frequency Extremely low frequency (ELF) is the ITU designation for electromagnetic radiation ( radio waves) with frequencies from 3 to 30 Hz, and corresponding wavelengths of 100,000 to 10,000 kilometers, respectively. In atmospheric sc ...

bands. One such interaction is absorption of energy from the fields, which can cause tissue to heat up; more intense fields will produce greater heating. This can lead to biological effects ranging from muscle relaxation (as produced by a

diathermy Diathermy is electrically induced heat or the use of high-frequency electromagnetic currents as a form of physical therapy and in surgical procedures. The earliest observations on the reactions of high-frequency electromagnetic currents upon the ...

device) to burns. Many nations and regulatory bodies like the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection have established safety guidelines to limit EMF exposure to a non-thermal level. This can be defined as either heating only to the point where the excess heat can be dissipated, or as a fixed increase in temperature not detectable with current instruments like 0.1 °C. However, biological effects have been shown to be present for these non-thermal exposures; Various mechanisms have been proposed to explain these, and there may be several mechanisms underlying the differing phenomena observed. Many behavioral effects at different intensities have been reported from exposure to magnetic fields, particularly with pulsed magnetic fields. The specific pulseform used appears to be an important factor for the behavioural effect seen; for example, a pulsed magnetic field originally designed for spectroscopic

MRI Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to form pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes of the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and radio waves ...

, referred to as

Low Field Magnetic Stimulation Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy (PEMFT, or PEMF therapy), also known as low field magnetic stimulation (LFMS) uses electromagnetic fields in an attempt to heal non-union fractures and depression. By 2007 the FDA had cleared several such sti ...

, was found to temporarily improve patient-reported mood in bipolar patients, while another MRI pulse had no effect. A whole-body exposure to a pulsed magnetic field was found to alter standing balance and pain perception in other studies. A strong changing magnetic field can induce electrical currents in conductive tissue such as the brain. Since the magnetic field penetrates tissue, it can be generated outside of the head to induce currents within, causing

transcranial magnetic stimulation Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive form of brain stimulation in which a changing magnetic field is used to induce an electric current at a specific area of the brain through electromagnetic induction. An electric pulse gener ...

(TMS). These currents depolarize neurons in a selected part of the brain, leading to changes in the patterns of neural activity. In repeated pulse TMS therapy or rTMS, the presence of incompatible EEG electrodes can result in electrode heating and, in severe cases, skin burns. A number of scientists and clinicians are attempting to use TMS to replace

electroconvulsive therapy Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a psychiatry, psychiatric treatment where a generalized seizure (without muscular convulsions) is electrically induced to manage refractory mental disorders.Rudorfer, MV, Henry, ME, Sackeim, HA (2003)"Electroco ...

(ECT) to treat disorders such as severe depression and hallucinations. Instead of one strong electric shock through the head as in ECT, a large number of relatively weak pulses are delivered in TMS therapy, typically at the rate of about 10 pulses per second. If very strong pulses at a rapid rate are delivered to the brain, the induced currents can cause convulsions much like in the original

. Sometimes, this is done deliberately in order to treat depression, such as in ECT.

Effects of electromagnetic radiation on human health

While health effects from extremely low frequency (ELF) electric and magnetic fields (0 to 300 Hz) generated by power lines, and radio/microwave frequencies (RF) (10 MHz - 300 GHz) emitted by radio antennas and wireless networks have been well studied, the intermediate range (IR) (300 Hz to 10 MHz) has been studied far less. Direct effects of low power radiofrequency electromagnetism on human health have been difficult to prove, and documented life-threatening effects from radiofrequency electromagnetic fields are limited to high power sources capable of causing significant thermal effects and medical devices such as pacemakers and other electronic implants. However, many studies have been conducted with

to investigate their effects on cell metabolism,

apoptosis Apoptosis (from grc, ἀπόπτωσις, apóptōsis, 'falling off') is a form of programmed cell death that occurs in multicellular organisms. Biochemical events lead to characteristic cell changes (morphology) and death. These changes incl ...

, and tumor growth. Electromagnetic radiation in the intermediate frequency range has found a place in modern medical practice for the treatment of bone healing and for nerve stimulation and regeneration. It is also approved as cancer therapy in form of

Tumor Treating Fields Alternating electric field therapy, sometimes called tumor treating fields (TTFields), is a type of electromagnetic field therapy using low-intensity, intermediate frequency electrical fields to treat cancer. A TTField-generating device manufact ...

, using alternating electric fields in the frequency range of 100–300 kHz. Since some of these methods involve magnetic fields that invoke electric currents in biological tissues and others only involve electric fields, they are strictly speaking electrotherapies albeit their application modi with modern electronic equipment have placed them in the category of bioelectromagnetic interactions.

Notes

References

Organizations

The Bioelectromagnetics Society
(BEMS)
European BioElectromagnetics Association
(EBEA)
Society for Physical Regulation in Biology and Medicine
(SPRBM) (formerly the Bioelectrical Repair and Growth Society, BRAGS)
International Society for Bioelectromagnetism
(ISBEM)
The Bioelectromagnetics Lab at University College Cork, Ireland

Institute of Bioelectromagnetism

Vanderbilt University, Living State Physics Group, archived page

Ragnar Granit Institute

Institute of Photonics and Electronics AS CR, Department of Bioelectrodynamics

Books

* Becker, Robert O.; Andrew A. Marino

State University of New York Press, Albany, 1982. . * Becker, Robert O.; ''The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life'', William Morrow & Co, 1985. . * Becker, Robert O.; ''Cross Currents: The Promise of Electromedicine, the Perils of Electropollution'', Tarcher, 1989. . * Binhi, V.N., ''Magnetobiology: Underlying Physical Problems''. San Diego: Academic Press, 2002. . * Brodeur Paul; ''Currents of Death'', Simon & Schuster, 2000. . * Carpenter, David O.; Sinerik Ayrapetyan, ''Biological Effects of Electric and Magnetic Fields'', Volume 1 : Sources and Mechanisms, Academic Press, 1994. . * Carpenter, David O.; Sinerik Ayrapetyan, ''Biological Effects of Electric and Magnetic Fields : Beneficial and Harmful Effects'' (Vol 2), Academic Press, 1994. . * Chiabrera A. (Editor), ''Interactions Between Electromagnetic Fields and Cells'', Springer, 1985. . * Habash, Riadh W. Y.; ''Electromagnetic Fields and Radiation: Human Bioeffects and Safety'', Marcel Dekker, 2001. . * Horton William F.; Saul Goldberg, ''Power Frequency Magnetic Fields and Public Health'', CRC Press, 1995. . * Mae-Wan, Ho; et al., ''Bioelectrodynamics and Biocommunication'', World Scientific, 1994. . * Malmivuo, Jaakko; Robert Plonsey

Oxford University Press, 1995. . * O'Connor, Mary E. (Editor), et al., ''Emerging Electromagnetic Medicine'', Springer, 1990. .

Journals

* ''

Bioelectromagnetics Bioelectromagnetics, also known as bioelectromagnetism, is the study of the interaction between electromagnetic fields and biological entities. Areas of study include electromagnetic fields produced by living cells, tissues or organisms, th ...

'' * ''

European Biophysics Journal The ''European Biophysics Journal'' is published by Springer Science+Business Media on behalf of the European Biophysical Societies Association. The journal publishes papers in the field of biophysics, defining this as the study of biological ph ...

'' *
International Journal of Bioelectromagnetism
', ISBEM, 1999–present, ()
''BioMagnetic Research and Technology'' archive
(no longer publishing) *
Biophysics
', English version of the Russian "Biofizika" () * ''Radiatsionnaya Bioliogiya Radioecologia'' ("Radiation Biology and Radioecology", in Russian) ({{ISSN, 0869-8031)

External links

by Jaakko and Plonsey.

Physiology Radiobiology Biology Electrophysiology ru:Магнитобиология