Filtering property of myelinated internode can change neural information representability and might trigger a compensatory action during demyelination.

Sci Rep

School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, University Road, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.

Published: December 2023

In this paper, for the first time, we showed that an Internode Segment (INS) of a myelinated axon acts as a lowpass filter, and its filter characteristics depend on the number of myelin turns. Consequently, we showed how the representability of a neural signal could be altered with myelin loss in pathological conditions involving demyelinating diseases. Contrary to the traditionally held viewpoint that myelin geometry of an INS is optimised for maximising Conduction Velocity (CV) of Action Potential (AP), our theory provides an alternative viewpoint that myelin geometry of an INS is optimised for maximizing representability of the stimuli a fibre is meant to carry. Subsequently, we show that this new viewpoint could explain hitherto unexplained experimentally observed phenomena such as, shortening of INS length during demyelination and remyelination, and non-uniform distribution of INS in the central nervous system fibres and associated changes in diameter of nodes of ranvier along an axon. Finally, our theory indicates that a compensatory action could take place during demyelination up to a certain number of loss of myelin turns to preserve the neural signal representability by simultaneous linear scaling of the length of an INS and the inner radius of the fibre.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10721845PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-49208-9DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

compensatory action
8
myelin turns
8
neural signal
8
viewpoint myelin
8
myelin geometry
8
geometry ins
8
ins optimised
8
ins
6
myelin
5
filtering property
4

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!