A new mechanism of nervous system plasticity: activity-dependent myelination
By Douglas Fields. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2015
712 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The synapse is the focus of experimental research and theory on the cellular mechanisms of nervous system plasticity and learning, but recent research is expanding the consideration of plasticity into new mechanisms beyond the synapse, notably including the possibility that conduction velocity could be modifiable through changes in myelin to optimize the timing of information transmission through neural circuits. This concept emerges from a confluence of brain imaging that reveals changes in white matter in the human brain during learning, together with cellular studies showing that the process of myelination can be influenced by action potential firing in axons. This Opinion article summarizes the new research on activity-dependent myelination, explores the possible implications of these studies and outlines the potential for new research.
Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Developmental Neuroscience, Molecular Biology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/73a729795d737fd3148273c493992c302c24717f
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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
In Developmental Neuroscience
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Citations in the corpus
- Adolescence as a neurobiological critical period for the development of higher-order cognition (2018, positive): “Myelination of axons is a mechanism of plasticity that is directed in an activity-dependent manner and results in increased speed and fidelity of neural signaling (Fields, 2015).”
- Brain Plasticity and Human Evolution (2017, positive): “…sheath is a lipidrich wrapping that surrounds axons to enhance the speed and fidelity of the transmission of information encoded in action potentials, a process that is essential for enabling synchronized timing of ensembles of neuronal activity in sensory processing and cognition (Fields 2015).”
- The Development of Brain White Matter Microstructure (2018, background): “A possible mechanism for these changes is activity-dependent myelination, either via new myelination of previously-unmyelinated pathways, or via myelin remodeling of already myelinated axons (Fields, 2015).”
- White matter changes in Alzheimer’s disease: a focus on myelin and oligodendrocytes (2018, neutral): “electrical transmission in the neuronal network [32].”