ABSTRACT
The mechanism of transmission of the information along nerve fibers has been the subject of physiological experimental and theoretical studies ever since the electric nature of the nerve impulse was discovered. The nerve impulse travels as a wave of ionic changes that depolarize the membrane of the fiber. The energy necessary to produce and maintain the process is derived from the metabolism of the nervous cell and not from the stimulus that provoked the discharge.50-53 A measuring apparatus placed near the nerve will detect the passage of a nerve impulse as a potential change, which is called the action potential of nerve. The velocity at which the nerve impulse is conducted is characteristic of the fiber and does not depend on the stimulus strength. Since nerve trunks carry different types of fibers which have different sizes and conduction velocities (CVS), a stimulus strong enough to elicit responses from all the fibers procluces a compound action potential (CAP) which contains integrated information about the conduction characteristics of the entire nerve.
