by Max Planck Society Oligodendrocytes wrap around the axon of a nerve cell. In this way, they form an electrical insulation layer around the axon and thus increase the conduction speed. The oligodendrocytes also supply the neuron with energy. In a conversation, we can easily understand and distinguish individual words. In the brain, the temporal structure...
A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in Germany has found that T-cell specificity plays a major role in immune system attacks on myelin versus β-synuclein in people with multiple sclerosis. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their study of T-cell behavior in rat models and what they learned....
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a debilitating disease where the immune system mistakenly attacks myelin, the sheaths protecting neurons in the nervous system. Like exposed electrical wires, this effectively short-circuits the nerves, disrupting communication between the brain and the body that leads to impaired motor skills and cognition. Now, researchers at Melbourne University have developed a synthetic peptide...
The normal mature dog spinal cord (A) has many axons surrounded by thick myelin sheaths (blue). In contrast, in the recovered dog with the genetic abnormality (B), there are many axons with thin myelin sheaths, identical to that seen in …more In the central nervous system of humans and all other mammals, a vital insulating...
A normal 9-month-old rat has myelin (blue) throughout the brain but the age-matched mutant rat (below) appears to have none. (Scale bar is 1 mm; front of brain is at right.). After a 29-year quest, Ian Duncan, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has finally pinpointed the cause of a...
