"Dr. Barry L. Ornitz" wrote in news:qmxIl.84715
:

....
While we have been talking about conventional electrical
transmission lines, we can also analyze nerves as a transmission
line. A nerve is essentially an electrical transmission line with
chemical transducers on each end. When a receptor synapse detects
a neurotransmitter, like serotonin or norepinephrin, it sends an
electrical signal down the neuron. The neuron is the transmission
line. It is essentially an ionic conductor covered with a fatty
substance known as myelin. The result is a distributed resistance-
capacitance line. In diabetics, the myelin sheath is partially
destroyed and replaced with sorbitol, a sugar alcohol. In addition
to being more conductive than myelin, sorbitol has a far higher
dielectric constant. Viewing the neuron as a distributed RC line,
we have both added shunt conductance and increased the capacitance.
It is no wonder that nerve conduction velocity and amplitude both
decrease resulting in such things as peripheral neuropathy, usually
associated with diabetics.

I contracted a disease when I was young, a disease that caused the body's
T cells to attack the cells of the mylon sheath (in our terms, the
dielectric that separates the =ve and -ve ionic material in the nerve's
coaxial cable, effectively shorting the coax.

During a week or two of onset of the disease, the doctors performed TDR
like tests on nerves in my legs, placing a pair if needles each side of a
motor nerve, at each end of the nerve, and pulsing the nerve from a
signal generator. The sig gen fired a CRO with a camera and 100' roll
film back. They took thousands of pics over the couple of weeks,
measuring attenuation and velocity of propagation.

Yes, I am aware that there are parallels.

Owen