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i am surprised to read that my peers are still so concerned with the battery analogy mentioned in class to represent the relationship of an impulse traveling through a medium, or the action potential flowing through an axon. i dont have much of a background in biology so this idea is very comprehensive for me. what im not so clear about is the concept of a resting potential, which we havent covered yet but i am interested to learn more about. resting potential seems to contradict the idea that ions are constantly in motion, and i wonder if it simply means that the sodium potassium pumps are inhibitted so that permeabillity is halted? i also still have my question from earlier which asked why the propogation simulation extendedin both directions when the middle node is pressed. i was under the impression that messages only propogate down the axon?

i also wonder about inputs which are obstructed during the action potential. what consequences arise when inputs are not propogated? is the output different? is there no ouput? what sorts of outside factors can influence the propogation of an action potential or make it less sufficient?

i noticed a lot of people are interested in myelin so to keep the conversation going i had a quick question about problems in myelination and what this could mean for the input-output connection. what happens when there is too much myelin? what happens when there is too little? (i think epilespy is an outcome of decreased amounts of myelination, causing information to be crossed among neurons causing seizures). can the myelin be punctured since it is simply a thin lipid layer? what happens if the myelin does not cover the whole axon?