Direct recording of the action currents of the nerve trunks and a quantitative assessment of nervous activity

Summary

A method is suggested which allows the electroneurogram from a bundle of nerve fibers or nerve trunks to be recorced on an ink-writing or other kind of instrument with electromagnetic heads having the usual frequency response of up to about 100 cycles per second. For this purpose rectification and integration of the signals of the neurogram was carried out by use of a simple diode detector whose output voltage was supplied to a DC amplifier feeding into a recording device.

It was shown that the values recorded in this way are proportional to the quantity of information (in a binary code) transmitted along the nerve.

The record obtained from the averaged electroneurogram facilitates objective quantitative assessment of nervous activity.