20220603 : power source?

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I am an electrical engineer by training. So these are crazy thoughts from the electrical engineer in my mind 🙂

I have always assumed everything we think of is some sort of energy transformed into signals in the head. It might be whatever it is, but it gets converted to electrical signals in the brain. I guess that assumption got reinforced over time due to the prevalence of many sorts of scans that respond to some form of electromagnetic detection.

After my stroke, I have realised everything below the neck is pretty much useless if these electrical signals dont pass through from the brain to everywhere else (actually everything above the neck on the face also!).

The nerves are basically like wires - optic fibre grade++ and the brain is like a very complex super chip.

The rest of the body with its 5 external senses - are basically sensors they have receptors (the sense organs) and transducers. They may be chemically or mechanically or thermally triggered or whatever triggered, but have to be converted to electrical signals to transmit to the brain.

Now the electric signals from the brain has to go everywhere just like it receives signals. I don't know if the same strand of wire terminating somewhere does both or the body has developed independent circuits for each. My hunch is that they are separate - I am not sure though.

From what I know (if I am wrong, I don't know how I passed electrical engineering) - we need a potential difference in the circuit for charges to flow. 

I am assuming that charge is somewhere in the head/ brain. Going by the amount of things done, it has to be a significant power supply. Individual circuits are probably very small in terms of power requirements. Cumulatively - it must be a very significant supply.


Could be like a very big battery or a generator in a power plant.

If it is a battery, how do we recharge it? I am guessing it gets recharged when we sleep. Which is why why we often say "I need to recharge my batteries". 
Which begs the question - what is the main power source to recharge?

If it is like a generator, it needs to be running all the time. Why does it sleep/ rest/ have downtime?
What is the fuel for it? I know we eat stuff and the biology bit. But it doesn't work well by just consuming good food does it. What is the other constant fuel that will keep it running well...


Comments

  1. Madhukar3/6/22 18:07

    Forgot the reference: brain is the biggest consumer of energy in human body it seems. Second is digestive organs.

    Very recently I saw documentary on “earthing”.. it seems some electrons pass from earth to body when our body touches the earth. shoes act as insulators from earth and that leads to various physical issues.

    So some kind of energy exchange from earth. Other common ones, sunlight certainly has some impact on our energy. Breathing is certainly another source.. I guess these have some role to play.

    I believe Tesla was experimenting on harnessing electricity from atmosphere..

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sreekanth4/6/22 07:50

    Madhukar: I guess the third pin (grounding) is needed in all circuits to make it more stable :)
    Sunlight and breathing if they have anything to do with nerves and energy - we have a leaf to borrow from evolution going solar and wind energy aeons ago :)

    ReplyDelete

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