The DOI matches its Crossref record; 36 of the 36 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Myelination: An Overlooked Mechanism of Synaptic Plasticity?
Open accessAbstract
Myelination of the brain continues through childhood into adolescence and early adulthood—the question is, Why? Two new articles provide intriguing evidence that myelination may be an underappreciated mechanism of activity-dependent nervous system plasticity: one study reported increased myelination associated with extensive piano playing, another indicated that rats have increased myelination of the corpus callosum when raised in environments providing increased social interaction and cognitive stimulation. These articles make it clear that activity-dependent effects on myelination cannot be considered strictly a developmental event. They raise the question of whether myelination is an overlooked mechanism of activity-dependent plasticity, extending in humans until at least age 30. It has been argued that regulating the speed of conduction across long fiber tracts would have a major influence on synaptic response, by coordinating the timing of afferent input to maximize temporal summation. The increase in synaptic amplitude could be as large as neurotransmitter-based mechanisms of plasticity, such as LTP. These new findings raise a larger question: How did the oligodendrocytes know they were practicing the piano or that their environment was socially complex?
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Cites
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Cited by
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“In addition, gliogenesis and synaptogenesis occur concurrently in the brain, and glial-cell maturation marks the end of the synaptogenic and plastic period”
BackgroundA new mechanism of nervous system plasticity: activity-dependent myelination
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Self-citationWhite matter maturation reshapes structural connectivity in the late developing human brain
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Metadata
- Authors
- Fields, R. D.
- Venue
- The Neuroscientist
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2005-12
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 528-531
- ISSN
- 1073-8584 (ISSN-L)
- 1089-4098
- OpenAlex
- W2123556420
- Cited by
- 256
- References
- 36
- FWCI
- 2.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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