(Medical Xpress)—We've done a number of articles recently about some amazing individuals developing personalized treatments to their own currently uncurable disease. Whether it is a rare orphan disease like Sanfilippo Syndrome ...
Students of physiology are invariably taught that the primary function of myelin is to insulate nerves. In particular, to make action potentials more efficient by increasing the thickness of the membrane and thereby decreasing ...
Most memories fade in a matter of days or weeks, while some persist for months, years, or even for life. What allows certain experiences to leave such a long-lasting imprint in our neural circuits? This is an age-old question ...
Feb 10, 2020
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Williams Syndrome, a rare neurodevelopmental disorder that affects about one in 10,000 babies born in the United States, produces a range of symptoms including cognitive impairments, cardiovascular problems, and extreme friendliness, ...
Apr 22, 2019
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Nerve cells stripped of their insulation can no longer carry vital information, leading to the numbness, weakness and vision problems often associated with multiple sclerosis. A new study shows an overlooked source may be ...
Nov 27, 2018
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Recovery after severe spinal cord injury is notoriously fraught, with permanent paralysis often the result. In recent years, researchers have increasingly turned to stem cell-based therapies as a potential method for repairing ...
May 23, 2018
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In the central nervous system of humans and all other mammals, a vital insulating sheath composed of lipids and proteins around nerve fibers helps speed the electrical signals or nerve impulses that direct our bodies to walk, ...
Oct 24, 2017
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(Medical Xpress)—Myelin is an electrically insulating layer, or sheath, made of protein and fatty molecules, and synthesized by cholesterol-rich oligodendrocytes, that forms around neurons and allows electrical impulses ...
(Medical Xpress)—Demyelinating diseases, like MS or ALS, attack an otherwise healthy nervous system and leave its owner a prisoner in their own body. The harder big pharma searches for—and fails to find—miracle drugs ...
(Medical Xpress)—The nervous system is host to some of the most sophisticated cellular structures found anywhere in the body. The orderly phalanxes of sterocilia which arm the ear's inner hair cells, and the photosensitive ...
Myelin is a dielectric (electrically insulating) material that forms a layer, the myelin sheath, usually around only the axon of a neuron. It is essential for the proper functioning of the nervous system. Myelin is an outgrowth of a type of glial cell. The production of the myelin sheath is called myelination. In humans, the production of myelin begins in the fourteenth week of fetal development, although little myelin exists in the brain at the time of birth. During infancy, myelination occurs quickly and continues through the adolescent stages of life.
Schwann cells supply the myelin for peripheral neurons, whereas oligodendrocytes, specifically of the interfascicular type, myelinate the axons of the central nervous system. Myelin is considered a defining characteristic of the (gnathostome) vertebrates, but myelin-like sheaths have also arisen by parallel evolution in some invertebrates, although they are quite different from vertebrate myelin at the molecular level. Myelin was discovered in 1854 by Rudolf Virchow.
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