Neuronal electricality founded in murburn-thermodynamic principles: 1. Background and basic theoretical formulation

Trans-membrane ion-gradients and fluxes are central to conventional electrical activity in aerobic cells/organelles.

The Murburn concept offers novel physico-chemical models for various metabolic, bioenergetic and electrophysiological phenomena.

Here, we develop a foundational framework for neuronal electrical activity and axonal signal propagation using the electron-holding potential (EHP), a dimensionless field related logarithmically to electron chemical potential.

By combining local redox relaxation dynamics with spatial transport driven by thermodynamic gradients, we derive a unified reaction-transport-relaxation equation that accounts for resting potential, excitability, waveform generation, and signal propagation within a single formalism.

Nonlinear local redox kinetics yield a stable resting state and graded responses from a single scalar field; extending it to the two-variable excitable (FitzHugh Nagumo) form, a bistable reaction with a slow recovery variable, further yields a genuine threshold, all-or-none spikes, a refractory period and a propagating action potential.

The framework accommodates known physiological variability of neurons and provides a direct bridge between metabolic/redox state and electrophysiology.

This framework offers testable predictions for neuronal dynamics (such as velocity, waveform morphology, and environmental conditions) across biological systems.

We derive and solve the equations to obtain the transmembrane potential as a function of time, and the neuronal conduction velocity as a function of parameters like ionic strength, temperature, axon diameter, myelination, and driving potential.

In the second part of this work, we present comparative analyses, simulations, and experimental strategies for validation and falsification.