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While at first the analogy of an action potential to a battery, was confusing and a bit of a strange concept for me. I have learnt about action potentials, etc. prevously from other bio classes and have used batteries attached to a voltmeter to measure the voltage between two terminals, I have never thought of the action potential as a battery.

However as Thursday's class progressed I began to understand the connection between a battery and an action potential much more. I think it is amazing how similar the two methods of transferring energy are so similar.

I think that thinking of the nervous system and behavior with these new terms in our vocabulary it is a bit more plausible to explain the phenomenon of an input with out a visible output. If the signal does not generate a strong enough action potential then there will not be a stimulation throughout the nervous system to generate a response/output. Similar to this a battery can die out if the concentration at an annode or cathode becomes to high and inhibits the chemical reactions from happening. If the chemical reaction is inhibited there is no response and if the action potential s not generated strongly there is not out put.