One of my favorite features of Keener’s website is his instructions on how to do the Hodgkin-Huxley Macarena. A photograph shows a large group of researchers doing this dance at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory last summer. To make sense of the HH Macarena, image that the left arm is the sodium channel “m” gate, and the right arm is the “h” gate, as discussed in Chapter 6 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology. (Note: I assume the picture on Keener's website shows a person facing us, so that her left arm is on my right side). Initially h is open (right arm vertical) and m is closed (left arm horizontal). During an action potential, m opens (step 2 and 3) and then h closes (step 4 and 5) and the “nerve” becomes refractory. Since the h gate is slower than the m gate, perhaps you should imagine having a lead weight wrapped around your right wrist as you do the HH Macarena. Unfortunately, Keener does not yet have a video posted (with music), but perhaps we can encourage him to make one. If readers of Introductory Physics for Medicine and Biology know only one dance, it should be the Hodgkin-Huxley Macarena (although the ECG dance is a close second).
Note added in 2019: Watch Keener lead the HH Macarena on Youtube!
Watch James Keener do the Hodgkin-Huxley Macarena.
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