Electrical stimulation of these synapses releases a chemical called serotonin and this, in turn, somehow stimulates the manufacture of the memory-forming proteins.

ECONOMIST: Prion proteins

Information is carried across synapses not by electrical pulses but by chemical messengers called neurotransmitters.

ECONOMIST: A history and geography of the brain

Just as importantly, the resulting nerve cells were able to conduct electrical impulses and could form the specialised junctions called synapses, by means of which nerve cells talk to each other.

ECONOMIST: Stem cells

In the brain, the signals travelling through the synapses rely on action potential, which is the electrical energy created by the difference in concentrations of charged atoms (ions) on the inside and outside of neuron, which move back and forth through ion channels.

FORBES: MIT Scientists Develop A Chip That Mimics Brain Synapses