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"The activity of a neuron can regulate the extent to which its axon is myelinated."

To understand how electrically active axons communicate with their surrounding oligodendrocytes, the researchers studied the mouse optic nerve, an ideal pathway for stimulating and monitoring the electrical activity of myelinated axons.

Fibers that remained myelinated despite the chronic attack of T cells had a higher risk to degenerate, while those that lost their myelin survived.

Research in several laboratories has found recently that OPCs can respond to neural impulse activity by dividing and maturing into myelin-forming oligodendrocytes, and increasing the number of myelinated axons.

Among them are how Heimburg's model accounts, quantitatively, for the increased velocity of conduction in myelinated axons and the mechanism by which it leads to transmission across a chemical synapse.