Researchers Study Nerve Impulses in Developing Brain

A study at the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin is focused on studying how myelin, a fatty substance that insulates nerve fibers, plays a role in the developing brain of children.

The study is being led by Doug Dean III, according to a medical release by the University of Wisconsin.

“Much like electricity traveling down wires, nerve impulses in our brain travel along nerve fibers,” the release in MedicalXPress reads. “And just as wires need insulation to function well, nerve fibers, too, rely on a kind of insulation called myelin, a fatty substance that protects them and increases the speed at which nerve impulses travel.”

Research by scientists in 2015 suggests that damage to the fatty sheaths around the brain’s nerve fibers — and not the severity of a brain injury itself — explains the difference in why some children bounce back quicker from a traumatic brain injury than others. Published in the July 15 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience, the study identified biomarkers that physicians could use to predict which children require closer monitoring after a brain injury because they are at a higher risk for poorer prognosis.

Read More: Traumatic Brian Injury Attorney in Wisconsin

The study was the first to combine imaging scans with recordings of the brain’s electrical activity to reveal how damage to myelin, the protective coating around the brain’s circuitry, affects how quickly children and teens can process and recall information after a concussion or other head trauma.

At birth, the human brain contains very little myelin, according to the MedicalXpress release, but it increases quickly throughout childhood.

“Many researchers think our ability to learn quickly and process large amounts of information as children is directly related to the rapid myelination of our  nerve fibers, yet scientists don’t fully understand this process. The study led by Dean combined two related but different  imaging techniques  to non-invasively track the rate at which nerve fibers in children’s brains become wrapped in myelin. ‘Having a non-invasive way to quantitatively map the thickness of myelin sheaths around nerve fibers will help us learn more about how the brain develops and when new nerve connections are made,’” Dean explains in the release.

The study could also give doctors insight into diseases that damage the myelin sheath such as multiple sclerosis and leukodystrophies.

In general, the thicker the myelin sheath, the quicker the speed of  nerve impulses  along that nerve fiber. To non-invasively measure the thickness of the myelin sheaths, Dean and his colleagues enhanced and combined two existing techniques that are variations of  magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. MRI has a wide range of medical applications and is often used to image the brain, other organs, and joints and soft tissue. MRI is also the basis of several imaging techniques.