Corticosteroids mediate a number of functions of mammalian brain, including blood pressure homeostasis, salt appetite and neuronal excitability.
The loss of sleep to a person of Newton's temperament, whose mind was never fiat rest, and at times so wholly engrossed in his scientific pursuits that he even neglected to take food, must necessarily have led to a very great deal of nervous excitability.
Current clamp and voltage clamp experiments revealed multiple effects of 5-HT on the intrinsic excitability of CN neurons.
His theory of medicine professed to explain the processes of life and disease, and the methods of cure, upon one simple principle - that of the property of" excitability,"in virtue of which the" exciting powers,"defined as being (1) external forces and (2) the functions of the system itself, call forth the vital phenomena" sense, motion, mental function and passion."All exciting powers are stimulant, the apparent debilitating or sedative effect of some being due to a deficiency in the degree of stimulus; so that the final conclusion is that" the whole phenomena of life, health as well as disease, consist in stimulus and nothing else."Brown recognized some diseases as sthenic, others as asthenic, the latter requiring stimulating treatment, the former the reverse; but his practical conclusion was that 97% of all diseases required a" stimulating "treatment.
This nervous excitability was inherited, though' not to the same excess, by Octave, whose mother died in his infancy and left him to the care of the hypersensitive invalid.
