[Verse 1]
Picture a wire strung down the axon's length,
resting at minus seventy, gathering strength.
Little nudges knock, politely they call,
but only together can they topple the wall.
Push past minus fifty-five, the gate flies wide —
threshold crossed now, there's no turning the tide.
[Chorus]
Na rushes in, K rushes out,
that's the handshake the spike is about.
Up to plus thirty, then back to the floor,
all or nothing — zero or roar.
Minus fifty-five is the password you need,
no half measures, no in-between speed.
[Verse 2]
Voltage-gated sodium doors swing wide,
positive feedback's the engine inside:
depolarize a little, the next door unlocks,
a chain reaction that nobody stops.
Forty millivolts, a sunburst so bold,
the membrane's flipped from silver to gold.
[Verse 3]
Then sodium doors grow tired and seal,
potassium opens — the counter-appeal.
Charge drains out like air from a tire,
voltage falls fast, retreating from fire.
It dips below rest, a quiescent dell,
hushed and recovering before it can swell —
a refractory hush, a pause in the song,
before the next impulse comes rolling along.
[Bridge]
Hodgkin and Huxley, nineteen fifty-two,
clamped the voltage on a squid axon so blue.
Voltage clamp held the membrane in place,
revealing the currents hiding their face.
Equations they wrote became the whole frame,
Stockholm came calling — sixty-three brought the fame.
[Chorus]
Na rushes in, K rushes out,
that's the handshake the spike is about.
Up to plus thirty, then back to the floor,
all or nothing — zero or roar.
Minus fifty-five is the password you need,
no half measures, no in-between speed.
[Verse 4]
One to two milliseconds, gone in a blink,
yet strung end to end they teach you to think.
Not the size but the rate and the time,
Morse code of the mind, a pulsing rhyme.
Fast bursts or slow, spaced far apart,
the pattern's the message, encoding the heart of the thought.
[Verse 5]
Myelin wraps the axon in sheaths of white,
nodes of Ranvier spark in the night.
Saltatory leaps, the signal takes flight,
jumping the gaps swift, electric and light.
Insulation's the trick to keep the pulse keen,
racing faster than a current unseen,
from node to node the impulse will fly,
quicker than thought beneath the skull's sky.
[Chorus]
Na rushes in, K rushes out,
that's the handshake the spike is about.
Up to plus thirty, then back to the floor,
all or nothing — zero or roar.
Minus fifty-five is the password you need,
no half measures, no in-between speed.
[Outro]
Rise, fall, undershoot — the spike's little dance,
threshold crossed and it leaves nothing to chance.
Na in, K out, the current's great trade,
that's the action potential — the signal that's made.