Heat as Sound, Neural Impulses as Sound

Another bit from November 2013:

Bill Beatty wrote a thought-provoking essay showing the unity of sound, heat, and electromagnetic radiation. Heat is a form of sound, of very high frequency and wide bandwidth. This is acknowledged in the theory explaining superconductivity, which treats heat and sound as being composed of quantum pseudo-particles called phonons. Heimburg et. al. showed that neural impulses are primarily sound-like, accounting for their low speed and because of their solitonic form their lack of energy dissipation. The electrical effects associated with the impulses are due to the thickening of the neural membrane during the pulse increasing the separation between the charges on the inside and outside of the membrane, resulting in a transient decrease in capacitance which increases the voltage across the membrane. Tree-like structures such as neurons have a rich spectrum of mechanical resonances, largely due indirectly to the form of the cytoskeleton, which determines the form and stiffness of the neuron. Neural pulses also resonate with parts of the cytoskeleton and may change its form, as the microtubules together with the layers of ordered water surrounding them have non-linear ferroelectric and topological quantum properties which are linked to discrete shape changes of the microtubules which in turn affect the shape of axons, dendrites and thus the neurons' mechanical resonances.