The battery analogy, I feel, is both great at explaining particular aspects of action potentials yet lacking in other areas. There's no better way to imagine the electrical gradient across the membrane that provides the means by which a depolarizing effect can take place, than to picture a battery, the voltage source in a complete circuit. This is all very good for the purpose of simplifying the mechanism by which action potentials work in order to understand it more clearly, however it is difficult to refer to this model to account for other properties belonging to action potential propagation. One of the most notable factors in this process is myelin, a component of the neuron required for rapid propagation and is required for effective conduction of electrical signals. I don't recall an analogous insulating feature in the battery analogy that makes the effective propagation of action potentials possible, although I may be wrong.

On a different note, I found the hearing thunder and seeing lightening concept Prof. Grobstein brought up really intriguing although I would like to hear more clarification on that topic. Can the idea of proper wiring, that is the correct connection of input and output boxes when all of the action potentials throughout the body are the same, explain some disorders such as dyslexia, where the input results in a different output from those who suffer from the disorder? If so, since this can be remediated to a certain extent via therapy and training, is this an actual rewiring of the input-output connection?