Measuring the Electromagnetic Fields of the Human Body: From Burr’s L-Fields to Modern Bioelectromagnetics

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The Electric Body

You are an electromagnetic being. This is not a New Age metaphor. It is a statement of physics.

Every cell in your body maintains an electrical voltage across its membrane — typically -70 millivolts, negative inside relative to outside. This is not a passive state; it is an active, energy-consuming process maintained by ion pumps that shuttle sodium, potassium, calcium, and chloride ions against their concentration gradients, 24 hours a day, consuming roughly 30% of your total metabolic energy just to maintain this electrical gradient.

Your heart generates electrical currents strong enough to be measured at the skin surface (the electrocardiogram) and electromagnetic fields detectable three feet away. Your brain generates electrical currents measurable at the scalp (the electroencephalogram) and magnetic fields detectable with superconducting sensors. Your muscles generate electrical currents during contraction. Your nerves transmit information as electrical impulses traveling at speeds up to 120 meters per second. Your wounds generate injury currents that guide repair. Your bones generate piezoelectric potentials under mechanical stress that guide remodeling.

And underlying all of these alternating-current (AC) signals — the heartbeats, the brainwaves, the nerve impulses — there is a steady-state, direct-current (DC) electrical field that pervades the entire body. This DC field was first systematically measured in the 1930s, largely forgotten by mainstream medicine, and is now being rediscovered as a fundamental regulatory system that may hold the key to understanding regeneration, cancer, and consciousness.

This article maps the history, the measurements, and the implications of the human body’s electromagnetic fields — from the earliest observations to the cutting-edge instruments of today.

Harold Saxton Burr: The Life Fields

The story begins in the anatomy department at Yale University in the 1930s, where Harold Saxton Burr, professor of neuroanatomy, began a research program that would span three decades and produce over 90 peer-reviewed papers — and yet would be almost completely ignored by mainstream biology for half a century.

Burr’s central insight was simple but revolutionary: living organisms are not just chemical systems. They are electrical systems. And the electrical fields they generate are not mere byproducts of chemical activity — they are organizing fields that guide the development, maintenance, and repair of biological form.

Burr’s Measurement Method

Burr used sensitive vacuum tube voltmeters to measure the voltage differences between two points on the surface of living organisms. Unlike a standard voltmeter, which draws current from the circuit being measured (potentially disturbing the field), Burr’s instruments had extremely high input impedance — they measured voltage while drawing virtually no current, preserving the integrity of the biological field.

Using silver-silver chloride electrodes (which minimize electrode artifact), Burr measured voltage gradients on the surface of trees, salamanders, frogs, humans, and other organisms. His key findings included:

Voltage gradients in development. Burr measured the voltage field around unfertilized frog eggs and found that the electrical axis of the egg predicted the future orientation of the embryo’s nervous system — before any physical differentiation had occurred. The electrical field preceded and apparently guided morphological development.

Tree L-fields. Burr and his colleague Leonard Ravitz measured the voltage fields of trees over periods of years. They found stable, reproducible voltage patterns that fluctuated with:

• Lunar cycles (approximately 28-day periodicity)
• Solar activity (11-year sunspot cycle)
• Seasonal changes
• Thunderstorm activity
• Sunrise and sunset

The trees’ electrical fields were tracking cosmic phenomena with remarkable fidelity — as if each tree were an antenna tuned to the electromagnetic environment of the Earth and Sun.

Human ovulation prediction. Burr discovered that women’s surface voltage measurements showed a sharp, reproducible spike at the time of ovulation. He proposed this as a method for ovulation timing and published his findings in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The voltage change was precise enough to predict ovulation within 24 hours.

Wound healing. Burr measured the voltage gradients around wounds and found a characteristic pattern: the wound site maintained a negative potential relative to surrounding intact tissue. This “current of injury” persisted until healing was complete, at which point the voltage returned to normal. The magnitude and direction of the current correlated with healing rate.

Cancer detection. In a striking series of studies, Burr found that malignant tissue produced measurable voltage changes at the skin surface — changes detectable before clinical symptoms appeared. He proposed surface voltage measurement as an early cancer detection method.

Burr’s Theoretical Framework

Burr formulated his findings into the concept of “L-fields” (life fields) — electrodynamic fields that he proposed served as organizing templates for biological form. He wrote:

“Measurements of the electric field of the whole system could reveal the overall pattern and, since these measurements could be correlated with biological and physiological measurements, could be used to predict biological and physiological conditions.”

Burr proposed that the L-field was not generated by biological activity but rather that biological activity was organized by the L-field — a top-down causation that was exactly opposite to the bottom-up reductionism of mainstream biology. This was a radical claim, and it contributed to the neglect of his work by the scientific establishment.

Yet Burr’s measurements themselves were meticulous, reproducible, and published in mainstream journals including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. The data were never seriously challenged. It was the interpretation that was too radical for the times.

Robert O. Becker: The Body Electric

If Burr discovered the body’s electrical fields, Robert O. Becker mapped them, manipulated them, and demonstrated their functional significance.

Becker was an orthopedic surgeon at the Syracuse VA Hospital in New York. In the 1960s, he became interested in a seemingly simple question: why do some animals (like salamanders) regenerate lost limbs while others (like humans) do not?

The Current of Injury and Regeneration

Becker measured the electrical potentials at wound sites in both regenerating (salamander) and non-regenerating (frog, human) species. His findings were revelatory:

All species produce a current of injury. When tissue is damaged, the wound site develops a negative potential relative to surrounding tissue, driving a DC current flow toward the wound. This current was not a nerve impulse — it was a steady, sustained DC current flowing through tissue.

Regenerating species produce a specific current pattern. In salamanders, the initial negative potential at the wound site reversed to positive within a few days, coinciding with the formation of the blastema — the undifferentiated cell mass from which the new limb grows. This reversal did not occur in non-regenerating species.

Manipulating the current alters the outcome. Becker found that by applying an external DC current to mimic the regenerative pattern, he could induce partial regeneration in frogs — animals that do not normally regenerate. He could stimulate the formation of blastema-like structures and partial limb regrowth by applying the correct current pattern.

The current controls cell dedifferentiation. The regenerative current appeared to cause mature, differentiated cells at the wound site to revert to a stem cell-like state — a process called dedifferentiation. These dedifferentiated cells then multiplied and re-differentiated into the various tissue types needed to rebuild the lost structure.

The Perineural DC System

Becker’s most significant discovery was the identification of a body-wide DC electrical system separate from the nerve impulse system.

The conventional understanding of the nervous system focuses on nerve impulses — action potentials — which are AC (alternating current) signals that travel along nerve fibers at speeds determined by fiber diameter and myelination. These impulses carry specific, point-to-point messages.

Becker found a second electrical system operating in parallel: a DC system carried by the perineural cells — the Schwann cells, satellite cells, and glial cells that surround and support nerve fibers. This perineural system conducted steady-state DC currents that traveled not along the nerve fiber itself but through the surrounding sheath cells.

Key characteristics of the perineural DC system:

Analog, not digital. Unlike nerve impulses (which are all-or-nothing digital signals), the perineural DC system carried graded, analog signals — continuously variable voltages that encoded information about the state of the whole system.

Slow conduction. The DC signals traveled at speeds of millimeters per second to centimeters per second — thousands of times slower than nerve impulses. This made them unsuitable for rapid signaling but ideal for carrying tonic, regulatory information about the body’s overall state.

Responsive to external fields. The perineural DC system was sensitive to external electromagnetic fields — geomagnetic field changes, atmospheric electromagnetic disturbances, and applied magnetic fields all produced measurable changes in the DC system.

Associated with consciousness. Becker found that the DC potential measured between the front and back of the head correlated with level of consciousness. During normal waking, the frontal region was positive relative to the occipital region. During sleep, this gradient decreased. Under general anesthesia, it reversed — the front became negative. In a deeply unconscious patient, the gradient was maximally reversed.

This was a stunning finding. It suggested that the DC electrical system was not merely a passive byproduct of neural activity but was actively involved in regulating consciousness itself. Becker proposed that the perineural DC system served as the “primitive data transmission and control system” of the body — an analog control system operating beneath and supporting the digital nerve impulse system.

Becker’s Electromagnetic Measurements

Becker used several techniques to map the body’s DC fields:

Surface voltage measurements. Similar to Burr’s technique, using high-impedance voltmeters and silver-silver chloride electrodes to map the DC voltage gradients across the body surface.

Hall-effect probes. These semiconductor devices, sensitive to DC magnetic fields, allowed Becker to measure the magnetic fields associated with the body’s DC currents.

Comparison with salamander regeneration currents. Becker systematically compared the electrical patterns in regenerating salamanders with those in humans, identifying both the commonalities (current of injury, DC potentials) and the critical differences (the current reversal that triggers blastema formation).

Clinical Applications

Becker’s research had direct clinical applications:

Bone healing. Becker demonstrated that applying a small DC current across a non-union bone fracture (one that had failed to heal naturally) could stimulate healing. This work was the foundation for PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic field) therapy, which was approved by the FDA for non-union fractures in 1979.

Infection control. Becker found that silver electrodes carrying DC current produced antimicrobial effects, and that electrically generated silver ions could control infections that were resistant to antibiotics. This work anticipated the modern revival of silver-based antimicrobial technologies.

Anesthesia and pain control. Becker’s observation that the DC frontal-occipital potential correlated with consciousness level led to experiments with transcranial DC stimulation (tDCS) for pain control and anesthesia — work that has found modern expression in the growing field of tDCS research.

The Heart’s Electromagnetic Field

The heart generates the strongest electromagnetic field in the body. Measuring this field has been a major focus of bioelectromagnetic research:

Measurement Techniques

Electrocardiography (ECG/EKG). The standard 12-lead ECG measures the heart’s electrical activity using electrodes on the skin. The voltage signals range from 0.5 to 3 millivolts at the chest surface. ECG has been the primary cardiac diagnostic tool since the early 20th century.

Magnetocardiography (MCG). Using SQUID magnetometers, the heart’s magnetic field can be measured without skin contact. The magnetic field peaks at approximately 50 picotesla over the chest and is detectable at distances up to approximately 3 feet (1 meter). MCG provides complementary information to ECG, with better spatial resolution and no volume conduction artifacts.

HeartMath magnetometer studies. The HeartMath Institute has used custom-built magnetometer arrays to measure the heart’s electromagnetic field at greater distances and to investigate its interaction with other people’s nervous systems. Their research has demonstrated:

• The heart’s magnetic field can be detected at distances of several feet.
• The field carries information about the person’s emotional state (coherent versus incoherent rhythm patterns).
• Another person’s brainwave (EEG) can register the signal from a nearby person’s heartbeat — demonstrating electromagnetic coupling between individuals.

The Heart’s Field as Information Carrier

The heart does not just pump blood. It broadcasts an electromagnetic signal that encodes information about its rhythmic state, its variability patterns, and by extension, the emotional and physiological state of the person. This broadcast occurs continuously, reaches every cell in the body, and extends into the space around the person.

Research by Rollin McCraty has shown that the heart’s electromagnetic field modulates neural processing in the brain. The heart’s rhythmic electromagnetic pulse reaches the brain approximately 250 milliseconds before each heartbeat-evoked potential appears in the EEG. This means the heart’s field is literally priming the brain’s processing before each beat — influencing perception, cognition, and emotional processing on a beat-by-beat basis.

The heart’s electromagnetic field is the body’s most powerful broadcast signal. In engineering terms, it is the carrier wave — the fundamental frequency on which all other physiological signals ride. Its coherence determines the coherence of everything downstream.

The Brain’s Electromagnetic Field

The brain generates electromagnetic fields that, while much weaker than the heart’s, carry extraordinarily complex information:

Electric Fields

The brain’s electric fields are measured by EEG at the scalp surface. Voltages range from 10 to 200 microvolts — roughly 100 times weaker than the heart’s signal. But what the brain’s field lacks in amplitude, it makes up in complexity. The EEG signal contains information about consciousness state, cognitive processing, emotional state, sleep stage, and neurological health — encoded in the frequency, amplitude, phase, and spatial distribution of the electrical oscillations.

Magnetic Fields

The brain’s magnetic fields, measured by magnetoencephalography (MEG), range from 100 to 1,000 femtotesla — roughly 1,000 times weaker than the heart’s magnetic field. Despite their weakness, these fields carry exquisite temporal information about neural processing and provide better source localization than EEG.

The Endogenous EM Field Theory of Consciousness

Johnjoe McFadden, a molecular biologist at the University of Surrey, has proposed the “conscious electromagnetic information field” (cemi) theory — the idea that consciousness arises not from neural firing per se, but from the electromagnetic field generated by synchronized neural activity.

McFadden’s argument:

1. Synchronized neural firing produces an electromagnetic field that integrates information from multiple neurons.
2. This integrated field influences neural firing through a feedback mechanism (electromagnetic field effects on ion channels and neural membranes).
3. The integrated electromagnetic field is the physical substrate of consciousness — it is where the “binding” of separate neural signals into unified experience occurs.

This theory remains speculative, but it provides a physically plausible mechanism for consciousness that is grounded in measurable electromagnetic phenomena. If McFadden is correct, then measuring the brain’s electromagnetic field is not just measuring a correlate of consciousness — it is measuring consciousness itself.

Modern Measurement Techniques

The measurement of the body’s electromagnetic fields has advanced enormously since Burr’s vacuum tube voltmeters:

DC Field Measurement

High-impedance voltmeters. Modern digital voltmeters with input impedance exceeding 10 gigaohms can measure DC voltage gradients with microvolt precision. Combined with non-polarizing electrodes (silver-silver chloride or carbon-loaded rubber), these instruments can map the body’s DC field with spatial resolution determined by electrode placement.

Current density imaging. Developed by Joy et al. (1989) and refined by subsequent researchers, this technique uses MRI to map the DC current density distribution inside the body — providing a three-dimensional image of internal current flow patterns that was impossible with surface measurements alone.

AC Field Measurement

Multi-channel EEG. Modern high-density EEG systems with 256 or more channels provide detailed maps of the brain’s electrical field at the scalp surface, with source localization algorithms estimating the intracranial sources.

MEG. SQUID-based magnetoencephalography provides magnetic field maps of brain activity with millisecond temporal resolution and millimeter spatial resolution (for source localization).

ECG/MCG. Standard and high-resolution electrocardiography and magnetocardiography map the heart’s electromagnetic field in detail.

Emission Measurement

GDV/EPC (Electro-Photonic Capture). Captures the gas discharge around fingertips, reflecting the skin’s bioelectric properties.

Biophoton detection. Photomultiplier tubes and cooled CCD cameras measure the ultra-weak photon emission from the body surface.

Thermal imaging. Infrared cameras measure the body’s thermal radiation, which is influenced by blood flow and metabolic activity — both of which are electromagnetically regulated.

The Bioelectric Body: An Integrated View

The various electromagnetic fields of the body — the heart’s field, the brain’s field, the DC field, the bioelectric potentials of individual cells and tissues — are not separate systems operating independently. They are nested, interacting layers of a single electromagnetic organism.

The metaphor of the body as a computer system applies with remarkable precision:

The DC field is the BIOS. Like a computer’s Basic Input/Output System, the body’s DC field provides the foundational regulatory framework that underlies all higher-level operations. It is present from the earliest stages of embryonic development, guides tissue growth and repair, and regulates global organismic functions.

The nerve impulse system is the CPU. The digital, high-speed nerve impulse system processes specific information — sensory input, motor commands, cognitive operations — at clock speeds (firing rates) of 1-200 Hz.

The heart’s field is the system clock. The heart’s rhythmic electromagnetic pulse provides the master timing signal that synchronizes the body’s distributed processing systems. Its coherence determines the coherence of the whole system.

The brain’s EM field is the display. The brain’s electromagnetic field integrates information from all processing systems into a unified representation — what we experience as consciousness.

The biofield is the wireless network. The body’s electromagnetic emissions — the heart’s field extending three feet, the hands’ emissions reaching picotesla levels during healing, the biophoton emissions from every cell surface — constitute a wireless communication system that connects the organism to its electromagnetic environment and to other organisms.

This integrated view of the electromagnetic body is not a complete picture. There are chemical signals (hormones, neurotransmitters, cytokines), mechanical signals (pressure, vibration, fluid flow), and potentially other signaling modalities (quantum coherence, biophotonic communication) that are not captured by electromagnetic measurement alone. But the electromagnetic dimension is real, measurable, functionally significant, and increasingly accessible to modern instrumentation.

From Measurement to Understanding

The history of electromagnetic measurement of the human body is a story of progressive discovery — each generation of researchers finding another layer of the bioelectric system, another frequency band, another field component, another functional implication.

Burr found the DC fields and proposed they were organizing templates. Becker found the perineural DC system and linked it to regeneration and consciousness. HeartMath found that the heart’s electromagnetic field carries emotional information and couples to other people’s brainwaves. Davidson and Lutz found that meditation reorganizes the brain’s electromagnetic patterns in measurable and extraordinary ways.

Each discovery validates what the healing traditions always maintained: the human body is an electromagnetic being, embedded in electromagnetic fields, communicating through electromagnetic signals, organized by electromagnetic patterns that reflect and respond to the state of consciousness.

The instruments confirm what the healers always knew. And with each refinement of our instruments, the gap between measurement and mystery narrows.

References and Further Reading

Burr, H. S. (1972). Blueprint for Immortality: The Electric Patterns of Life. Neville Spearman.

Burr, H. S., & Northrop, F. S. C. (1935). The electrodynamic theory of life. Quarterly Review of Biology, 10, 322-333.

Becker, R. O., & Selden, G. (1985). The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life. William Morrow.

Becker, R. O. (1990). Cross Currents: The Perils of Electropollution, The Promise of Electromedicine. Tarcher.

McCraty, R. (2015). Science of the Heart, Volume 2. HeartMath Institute.

McFadden, J. (2020). Integrating information in the brain’s EM field: The cemi field theory of consciousness. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2020(1), niaa016.

Levin, M. (2012). Molecular bioelectricity in developmental biology: New tools and recent discoveries. BioEssays, 34(3), 205-217.

Nuccitelli, R. (2003). A role for endogenous electric fields in wound healing. Current Topics in Developmental Biology, 58, 1-26.

Funk, R. H. W., Monsees, T., & Ozkucur, N. (2009). Electromagnetic effects — from cell biology to medicine. Progress in Histochemistry and Cytochemistry, 43(4), 177-264.

Oschman, J. L. (2016). Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis. 2nd edition. Churchill Livingstone.

Zhao, M. (2009). Electrical fields in wound healing — an overriding signal that directs cell migration. Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology, 20(6), 674-682.

Nordenström, B. E. W. (1983). Biologically Closed Electric Circuits: Clinical, Experimental, and Theoretical Evidence for an Additional Circulatory System. Nordic Medical Publications.