Neurophysiology

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Neurophysiology is a branch of physiology and neuroscience that studies nervous system function rather than nervous system architecture.^[1] This area aids in the diagnosis and monitoring of neurological diseases. Historically, it has been dominated by electrophysiology—the electrical recording of neural activity ranging from the molar (the electroencephalogram, EEG) to the cellular (intracellular recording of the properties of single neurons), such as patch clamp, voltage clamp, extracellular single-unit recording and recording of local field potentials. However, since the neuron is an electrochemical machine, it is difficult to isolate electrical events from the metabolic and molecular processes that cause them. Thus, neurophysiologists currently utilise tools from chemistry (calcium imaging), physics (functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI), and molecular biology (site directed mutations) to examine brain activity.^[2]

The word originates from the Greek word νεῦρον meaning "nerve" and physiology meaning knowledge about the function of living systems (φύσις meaning "nature" and -λογία meaning "knowledge").