Salted Frog Legs

[MakiSupaStar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YZJt...layer_embedded

[5StringBlues]

That's like,all scientific and stuff.

[FL Knifemaker]

Been there, done that. That usually clears all the women out of the kitchen. They also do that if you put them in a pan to pan fry them. Fish will kick the lid off.

[Happynoj]

So why does that happen? Is it the salt osmosing water out of the muscles or something?

[wabbit]

this response was a little ways down in the comments section .. seems right


Well the brain sends signals called an action potential. And what basically happens is in the body you normally don't have someone with a salt shaker pouring sodium onto a nerve. Instead you have concentration gradients across a cell membrane, where sodium is very high outside and very low inside. So in the nerve cells, sodium channels can open up from an electrical signal (so they are VOLTAGE gated sodium channels) and that allows sodium to enter the cell, depolarizing it...

the cell depolarization leads to voltage gated calcium channels to open up, releasing calcium from something called the sarcomere that is in the muscle cell. This calcium binds to troponin C and that moves another thing called troponin T, and it starts the mechanism for muscle contraction with actin and myosin.

I have a feeling this guy pouring the sodium on a dead nerve is somehow artificially depolarizing the cells as some sodium is finding open channels to enter


but yea skeletal muscle is voluntary and is controlled by the brain through the use of controlled electrical signals that open voltage gated sodium channels.

In contrast, involuntary muscle such as cardiac and smooth muscle has other mechanisms to produce action potentials (the heart has the SA and AV node) and smooth muscle can function without electrical signals (blood vessel's smooth muscle has pressure receptors inducing calcium-induced-calcium-releas e)

I know its complex but yea this is physiology in motion

[Tsal]

Originally Posted by wabbit

this response was a little ways down in the comments section .. seems right


Well the brain sends signals called an action potential. And what basically happens is in the body you normally don't have someone with a salt shaker pouring sodium onto a nerve. Instead you have concentration gradients across a cell membrane, where sodium is very high outside and very low inside. So in the nerve cells, sodium channels can open up from an electrical signal (so they are VOLTAGE gated sodium channels) and that allows sodium to enter the cell, depolarizing it...

the cell depolarization leads to voltage gated calcium channels to open up, releasing calcium from something called the sarcomere that is in the muscle cell. This calcium binds to troponin C and that moves another thing called troponin T, and it starts the mechanism for muscle contraction with actin and myosin.

I have a feeling this guy pouring the sodium on a dead nerve is somehow artificially depolarizing the cells as some sodium is finding open channels to enter

This is pretty much correct.

To shorten this up, nerve signals work with sort of chemical-electric system that has to do with positive and negative charges of certain ions, such as sodium ions that exist in table salt. So, put additional salt where it isn't supposed to be, like on top of the nerve cell, you get a change in the +/- charge of the nerve. This causes the nerves think they got a signal, and they transmit it through to the muscles. Poking them with electricity has the same effect.

It's not a "dead nerve", though, since all the cells stay alive for a while after the organism has died.

[Eric Perry]

Man that's freaky!!!

[Joe Gress]

Thats kinda cool!

[Jonyak]

frog legs are so tasty.

[Phalex]

Galvani did it!