Definition and research guide
This page combines a MeSH definition, publication statistics and selected research abstracts. It is a starting point for reading the literature, not a medical textbook or a systematic evidence review.
Content available: 4 complete abstracts (625 words), 10 references. Full article text is not stored or reproduced here; follow the PMID, DOI or PMC links to read the original sources and their access terms.
Definition
Abrupt changes in the membrane potential that sweep along the cell membrane of excitable cells in response to excitation stimuli.
Definition: NLM Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) scope note (Public domain (U.S. National Library of Medicine); attribution requested). View the MeSH record.
Also known as: Action Potential; Potential, Action; Potentials, Action; Spike Potentials; Potential, Spike; Potentials, Spike; Spike Potential; Nerve Impulses.
Where it fits in the MeSH classification
- Broader topics
- Membrane Potentials
- See also
- Neural Conduction
Related concepts
- Cell Membrane
Research landscape
PubMed indexes 95,921 records tagged with the MeSH heading “Action Potentials” (counts retrieved 2026-10-29). 8,710 of them (9.1%) were published from 2020 onward, and the busiest period so far is through 1999 with 41,741 records.
Reviews account for 5,211 records (5.4%) and meta-analyses for 95. Randomized controlled trials number 332 (0.3%) as a share of all records on the topic. Randomized trials make up only a small share of this literature, so much of what is known comes from laboratory, observational or descriptive work.
Show the data
| Period | Records |
|---|---|
| through 1999 | 41,741 |
| 2000-2009 | 22,738 |
| 2010-2019 | 22,732 |
| 2020 onward | 8,710 |
Publication-type chart data
| Type | Records | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Reviews | 5,211 | 5.4% |
| Meta-analyses | 95 | 0.1% |
| Randomized controlled trials | 332 | 0.3% |
Method: PubMed query "Action Potentials"[MeSH Terms] with publication-type and date filters, retrieved 2026-10-29.
Reading the evidence in neuroscience
Neuroscience draws on tools with different strengths: cellular and animal work can manipulate circuits directly, while human imaging and electrophysiology observe the living brain at lower resolution. Small imaging studies are prone to false positives, and findings in animals do not always carry over to people. Clinical neurology and psychiatry rely on trials and cohort studies whose outcomes are often symptom scales. Check the species, the sample size, how the outcome was measured and whether results were replicated.
Evidence from open-access studies
These open-access studies come from PubMed’s best-match results for this heading (papers whose main topic it is), ranked here by citation count, with one recent addition. Each abstract is reproduced in full under its recorded open licence so that you can read the authors’ own words. They illustrate the literature; they are not a systematic summary of it. Citation counts measure attention, not reliability or clinical benefit.
| Study / authors | Year | Source label / design | Europe PMC citations | Licence / source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intrinsic electrical activity drives small-cell lung cancer progression | 2025 | Research article Design not recorded in structured metadata | 59 | cc by PMID 39939778 · DOI · PMC11922742 |
| Large-scale high-density brain-wide neural recording in nonhuman primates | 2025 | Research article Design not recorded in structured metadata | 49 | cc by PMID 40551025 · DOI · PMC12229894 |
| Developing cardiac digital twin populations powered by machine learning provides electrophysiological insights in conduction and repolarization | 2025 | Research article Design not recorded in structured metadata | 30 | cc by PMID 40379795 · DOI · PMC12084159 |
| A prefrontal cortex map based on single-neuron activity | 2026 | Research article Design not recorded in structured metadata | 10 | cc by PMID 41559475 · DOI · PMC12971490 |
Intrinsic electrical activity drives small-cell lung cancer progression [1]
Abstract reading summary — source excerpts
- Opening excerpt
- Elevated or ectopic expression of neuronal receptors promotes tumour progression in many cancer types1,2; neuroendocrine (NE) transformation of adenocarcinomas has also been associated with increased aggressiveness3.
- Closing excerpt
- Finally, we observed drastic changes in the innervation landscape during SCLC progression, which coincided with increased intratumoural heterogeneity and elevated neuronal features in SCLC cells, suggesting an induction of a tumour-autonomous vicious cycle, driven by cancer cell-intrinsic electrical activity, which confers long-term tumorigenic capability and metastatic potential.
- Interpretation limits
- Verbatim excerpts from the authors’ abstract; the closing excerpt may describe a finding, limitation or recommendation. Design, population, effect size and uncertainty have not been independently extracted or appraised. Read the complete abstract and linked paper before interpreting the findings.
Read complete abstract (196 words)
Elevated or ectopic expression of neuronal receptors promotes tumour progression in many cancer types1,2; neuroendocrine (NE) transformation of adenocarcinomas has also been associated with increased aggressiveness3. Whether the defining neuronal feature, namely electrical excitability, exists in cancer cells and impacts cancer progression remains mostly unexplored. Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) is an archetypal example of a highly aggressive NE cancer and comprises two major distinct subpopulations: NE cells and non-NE cells4,5. Here we show that NE cells, but not non-NE cells, are excitable, and their action potential firing directly promotes SCLC malignancy. However, the resultant high ATP demand leads to an unusual dependency on oxidative phosphorylation in NE cells. This finding contrasts with the properties of most cancer cells reported in the literature, which are non-excitable and rely heavily on aerobic glycolysis. Additionally, we found that non-NE cells metabolically support NE cells, a process akin to the astrocyte-neuron metabolite shuttle6. Finally, we observed drastic changes in the innervation landscape during SCLC progression, which coincided with increased intratumoural heterogeneity and elevated neuronal features in SCLC cells, suggesting an induction of a tumour-autonomous vicious cycle, driven by cancer cell-intrinsic electrical activity, which confers long-term tumorigenic capability and metastatic potential.
Abstract reproduced from the open-access article under the recorded cc by licence; © the authors. PMID 39939778 · DOI · PMC11922742
Large-scale high-density brain-wide neural recording in nonhuman primates [2]
Abstract reading summary — source excerpts
- Opening excerpt
- High-density silicon probes have transformed neuroscience by enabling large-scale neural recordings at single-cell resolution.
- Closing excerpt
- This technology substantially increases scalability and recording access relative to existing technologies and enables new classes of experiments that involve electrophysiological mapping of brain areas at single-neuron and single-spike resolution, measurement of spike-spike correlations between cells and simultaneous brain-wide recordings at scale.
- Interpretation limits
- Verbatim excerpts from the authors’ abstract; the closing excerpt may describe a finding, limitation or recommendation. Design, population, effect size and uncertainty have not been independently extracted or appraised. Read the complete abstract and linked paper before interpreting the findings.
Read complete abstract (130 words)
High-density silicon probes have transformed neuroscience by enabling large-scale neural recordings at single-cell resolution. However, existing technologies have provided limited functionality in nonhuman primates (NHPs) such as macaques. In the present report, we describe the design, fabrication and performance of Neuropixels 1.0 NHP, a high-channel electrode array designed to enable large-scale acute recording throughout large animal brains. The probe features 4,416 recording sites distributed along a 45-mm shank. Experimenters can programmably select 384 recording channels, enabling simultaneous multi-area recording from thousands of neurons with single or multiple probes. This technology substantially increases scalability and recording access relative to existing technologies and enables new classes of experiments that involve electrophysiological mapping of brain areas at single-neuron and single-spike resolution, measurement of spike-spike correlations between cells and simultaneous brain-wide recordings at scale.
Abstract reproduced from the open-access article under the recorded cc by licence; © the authors. PMID 40551025 · DOI · PMC12229894
Developing cardiac digital twin populations powered by machine learning provides electrophysiological insights in conduction and repolarization [3]
Abstract reading summary — source excerpts
- Opening excerpt
- Large-cohort imaging and diagnostic studies often assess cardiac function but overlook underlying biological mechanisms.
- Closing excerpt
- Our study demonstrates how CDT development at scale reveals biological insights across populations.
- Interpretation limits
- Verbatim excerpts from the authors’ abstract; the closing excerpt may describe a finding, limitation or recommendation. Design, population, effect size and uncertainty have not been independently extracted or appraised. Read the complete abstract and linked paper before interpreting the findings.
Read complete abstract (156 words)
Large-cohort imaging and diagnostic studies often assess cardiac function but overlook underlying biological mechanisms. Cardiac digital twins (CDTs) are personalized physics-constrained and physiology-constrained in silico representations, uncovering multi-scale insights tied to these mechanisms. In this study, we constructed 3,461 CDTs from the UK Biobank and another 359 from an ischemic heart disease (IHD) cohort, using cardiac magnetic resonance images and electrocardiograms. We show here that sex-specific differences in QRS duration were fully explained by myocardial anatomy while their myocardial conduction velocity (CV) remains similar across sexes but changes with age and obesity, indicating myocardial tissue remodeling. Longer QTc intervals in obese females were attributed to larger delayed rectifier potassium conductance GKrKs . These findings were validated in the IHD cohort. Moreover, CV and GKrKs were associated with cardiac function, lifestyle and mental health phenotypes, and CV was also linked with adverse clinical outcomes. Our study demonstrates how CDT development at scale reveals biological insights across populations.
Abstract reproduced from the open-access article under the recorded cc by licence; © the authors. PMID 40379795 · DOI · PMC12084159
A prefrontal cortex map based on single-neuron activity [4]
Abstract reading summary — source excerpts
- Opening excerpt
- The intrinsic organization underlying the central cognitive role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is poorly understood.
- Closing excerpt
- Our data-driven approach provides a scalable roadmap to explore functional organizations in diverse brain regions and species, opening avenues to obtain an integrated view of activity, structure and function in the brain.
- Interpretation limits
- Verbatim excerpts from the authors’ abstract; the closing excerpt may describe a finding, limitation or recommendation. Design, population, effect size and uncertainty have not been independently extracted or appraised. Read the complete abstract and linked paper before interpreting the findings.
Read complete abstract (143 words)
The intrinsic organization underlying the central cognitive role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is poorly understood. We approached organization by profiling the activity and spatial location of >24,000 neurons recorded in awake mice. High-resolution activity maps of the PFC did not align with cytoarchitecturally defined subregions. Instead, spontaneous activity and tuning to choice during a behavioral task were both related to intra-PFC hierarchy, suggesting that connectivity, rather than cytoarchitecture, shapes the PFC's activity landscape. Low-rate, regular spontaneous firing was a hallmark of both the PFC and high hierarchy. Surprisingly, choice tuning was overrepresented in units displaying high spontaneous firing rates, linking connectivity-based hierarchy to distinct functional properties in separate neuronal populations. Our data-driven approach provides a scalable roadmap to explore functional organizations in diverse brain regions and species, opening avenues to obtain an integrated view of activity, structure and function in the brain.
Abstract reproduced from the open-access article under the recorded cc by licence; © the authors. PMID 41559475 · DOI · PMC12971490
Key reviews and meta-analyses
The most cited review-type papers among PubMed’s best-match results for this heading, listed with bibliographic details only. Follow the links for the full text and access terms.
- Research article Interneurons. Fast-spiking, parvalbumin⁺ GABAergic interneurons: from cellular design to microcircuit function [5]
- Research article Measuring and interpreting neuronal correlations [6]
- Research article The spike-timing dependence of plasticity [7]
- Research article Novel electrode technologies for neural recordings [8]
- Research article Untangling cross-frequency coupling in neuroscience [9]
- Research article SpikeInterface, a unified framework for spike sorting [10]
References
- Peinado P, Stazi M, Ballabio C, Margineanu MB, Li Z, Colón CI, et al.. Intrinsic electrical activity drives small-cell lung cancer progression. . 2025. PMID 39939778 · DOI · PMC11922742
- Trautmann EM, Hesse JK, Stine GM, Xia R, Zhu S, O'Shea DJ, et al.. Large-scale high-density brain-wide neural recording in nonhuman primates. . 2025. PMID 40551025 · DOI · PMC12229894
- Qian S, Ugurlu D, Fairweather E, Toso LD, Deng Y, Strocchi M, et al.. Developing cardiac digital twin populations powered by machine learning provides electrophysiological insights in conduction and repolarization. . 2025. PMID 40379795 · DOI · PMC12084159
- Le Merre P, Heining K, Slashcheva M, Jung F, Moysiadou E, Guyon N, et al.. A prefrontal cortex map based on single-neuron activity. . 2026. PMID 41559475 · DOI · PMC12971490
- Hu H, Gan J, Jonas P. Interneurons. Fast-spiking, parvalbumin⁺ GABAergic interneurons: from cellular design to microcircuit function. Science. 2014. PMID 25082707 · DOI
- Cohen MR, Kohn A. Measuring and interpreting neuronal correlations. Nat Neurosci. 2011. PMID 21709677 · DOI · PMC3586814
- Feldman DE. The spike-timing dependence of plasticity. Neuron. 2012. PMID 22920249 · DOI · PMC3431193
- Hong G, Lieber CM. Novel electrode technologies for neural recordings. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2019. PMID 30833706 · DOI · PMC6531316
- Aru J, Aru J, Priesemann V, Wibral M, Lana L, Pipa G, et al.. Untangling cross-frequency coupling in neuroscience. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2015. PMID 25212583 · DOI
- Buccino AP, Hurwitz CL, Garcia S, Magland J, Siegle JH, Hurwitz R, et al.. SpikeInterface, a unified framework for spike sorting. Elife. 2020. PMID 33170122 · DOI · PMC7704107
About this article
- Sources
- NLM Medical Subject Headings (definition, synonyms); NCBI PubMed (counts, identifiers); Europe PMC (open-access abstracts and citation counts).
- Verification
- Every reference was resolved against PubMed on 2026-10-31; title, year and DOI matched.
- Review state
- automated source verified; no human expert review has been recorded yet.
- Version
- 1, last updated 2026-10-29.
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Evidence strength
EvidenceHelix's computed view of the study designs behind this topic: how common meta-analyses, randomized trials and reviews are, how recent the literature is, and a plain-language reading. It describes the design mix of the literature. It is not a quality appraisal of any study, and it is not medical advice.