The Spark of Life

Frances Ashcroft, the 2012 European Laureate at the L’Oreal-Unesco Women in Science Award, uses the latest scientific research to explain how electricity is vital to the human body.

We are all familiar with the idea that machines are powered by electricity, but perhaps not so aware that the same is true to ourselves. Using her latest scientific discoveries on ion channels, Ashcroft gives a spectacular account of the body electric, examining how, from conception to death, electrical signals in our cells are essential to everything we think and do. Electricity governs every aspect of our lives, from consciousness to sexual attraction, fighting infection to the beating of our hearts.

The Spark of Life introduces a cast of extraordinary characters whose work has charted the links between molecule and mind over the centuries. Ashcroft recounts the scientific detective stories involved in the development of our ideas about animal electricity, and shows how these are intimately entwined with our understanding of electricity itself. And, she describes how the latest advances have led to the identification, and in some cases the cure, of channelopathies, new class of ion channel disease.