Shock waves, high-energy sound or pressure waves (like thunder following lightening or a small, focused explosion), have little to do with electric shock. Shock waves can be generated in many ways, but electrohydraulic devices have the greatest capacity to produce and project high energy to a deep focal depth. ESWT can be highly focused and can achieve a focal point beyond 10 cm into deeper tis...

In order to elucidate the mechanisms by which a strong shock terminates reentrant wavefronts, we employed phase analysis techniques to study phase singularity dynamics in a finite element model of cardiac tissue. We located postshock phase singularities and traced their movement and survival for sixteen monophasic shocks applied at different times during the rotation of a spiral wave. Our analy...

We report the electrocution of Korean native cattle by a fallen electric wire, which caused the death of thirteen animals. The owner of the cattle felt an electric shock on touching the steel pen and found a fallen 220-V wire on the roof of the barn; additionally, the roof was singed. Clinically, the animals developed spasm, difficulty breathing, and excessive salivation. Histopathologically, m...

The pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis can learn conditioned taste aversion and then consolidate it into long-term memory (LTM). A high-voltage electric shock was used as the unconditioned stimulus, where we have previously used KCl. We varied the strength of both the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli to determine whether the so-called Yerkes-Dodson law prevailed. This is an empirical relationshi...

Diminished responses to stimuli defined as habituation can serve as a gating mechanism for repetitive environmental cues with little predictive value and importance. We demonstrate that wild-type animals diminish their responses to electric shock stimuli with properties characteristic of short- and long-term habituation. We used spatially restricted abrogation of neurotransmission to identify b...

Clinically, cardiac fibrillation caused by spiral and turbulent waves can be terminated by globally resetting electric activity in cardiac tissues with a single high-voltage electric shock, but it is usually associated with severe side effects. Presently, a promising alternative uses wave emission from heterogeneities induced by a sequence of low-voltage uniform electric field pulses. Neverthel...

A 47 year old man was brought by ambulance to the accident and emergency department after sustaining an electric shock at home. He was repairing a washing machine which had not been disconnected from the mains supply. As he reached around the drum with both arms he sustained an electric shock, rendering him unable to release his grip on the drum for at least 10 seconds. He did not lose consciou...