All or Nothing

One hundred years ago, as World War I raged across Europe, Edgar Adrian was treating soldiers with nerve damage at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. He had moved to the capital to become a doctor when war broke out in 1914. After the war, he returned to Cambridge and to his research – exploring how our nerves function. It was known that nerves send electrical signals to each other and the brain, but these signals were difficult to detect. Adrian developed a way to amplify this electrical activity by 5000 times, making it easier to monitor the firing of individual nerves. He’s best known for showing that nerves are triggered only when the stimulus they receive is above a certain threshold: the so-called 'all or none' response. In 1932, Adrian and Charles Sherrington were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their work on nerves.

Written by Deborah Oakley

Deborah Oakley

Writer

Deborah is researching healthy cognitive ageing at the University of Cambridge. She previously worked as a science communicator in London, working closely with the BPoD team.

• Image from the NIH U.S. National Library of Medicine
• Image in the public domain