Stochastic resonance at the single-cell level

Sergey M. Bezrukov () and Igor Vodyanoy
Additional contact information
Sergey M. Bezrukov: National Institutes of Health
Igor Vodyanoy: National Institutes of Health

Nature, 1997, vol. 388, issue 6643, 633-633

Abstract: Abstract Bezrukov and Vodyanoy reply — The possibility that the mechanism of stochastic resonance might account for the sensitivity of organisms to industrial low-frequency magnetic and/or electric fields has inspired much discussion1,2,10. In a recent Letter6 we formulated a physical model of stochastic resonance that permits quantitative analysis of the phenomenon in a variety of systems. Astumian and co-workers apply our results to the intriguing but difficult question of the role of stochastic resonance in signal detection at the level of a single cell. For a ‘typical cell’ of 100 μm radius, they come to a conclusion that stochastic resonance increases cell sensitivity to small signals,but that this increase is not significant enough to account for the effects reported by others2. Although we agree with their treatment of our theory, we show that for smaller cells stochastic resonance can improve signal detection considerably.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/41688 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:388:y:1997:i:6643:d:10.1038_41688

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/41688

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().