brain plasticity: cell cooperation (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, October 21, 2014, 14:43 (3477 days ago) @ David Turell

How special glial cells play a role in new motor skills:-“The paper shows very clearly that the ability to generate new myelin is necessary for adult mice to learn a complex motor task,” said the University of Michigan's Gabriel Corfas, author of an accompanying commentary in Science and who was not involved in the research.
 
"Moreover, because myelin is produced by non-neuronal glial cells called oligodendrocytes, which myelinate axons by extending thin processes of their cell membranes to wrap around them, the study challenges the long-standing assumption that learning results exclusively from changes to neuronal anatomy or function. “What this paper really does in a very compelling and elegant way is show that the glial cells . . . really perform much more important tasks than had hitherto been assigned to them,” said Robin Franklin, professor at the University of Cambridge, who studies the process of remyelination and who was not involved in the work. “This paper is a very significant step in a mounting body of work that shows that in fact the glial cells are not simply cells for neurons; they have, in their own right, fundamentally important roles in how the brain works.”"-http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/41245/title/Myelin-s-Role-in-Motor-Learning/