Department of Neurogenetics, Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine, Göttingen, Germany.
International Max Planck Research School for Neurosciences, Göttingen, Germany.
Nat Commun. 2020 Oct 30;11(1):5497. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-19152-7.
Myelinating oligodendrocytes enable fast propagation of action potentials along the ensheathed axons. In addition, oligodendrocytes play diverse non-canonical roles including axonal metabolic support and activity-dependent myelination. An open question remains whether myelination also contributes to information processing in addition to speeding up conduction velocity. Here, we analyze the role of myelin in auditory information processing using paradigms that are also good predictors of speech understanding in humans. We compare mice with different degrees of dysmyelination using acute multiunit recordings in the auditory cortex, in combination with behavioral readouts. We find complex alterations of neuronal responses that reflect fatigue and temporal acuity deficits. We observe partially discriminable but similar deficits in well myelinated mice in which glial cells cannot fully support axons metabolically. We suggest a model in which myelination contributes to sustained stimulus perception in temporally complex paradigms, with a role of metabolically active oligodendrocytes in cortical information processing.
少突胶质细胞使动作电位沿有髓轴突快速传播。此外，少突胶质细胞还发挥多种非典型作用，包括轴突代谢支持和活动依赖性髓鞘形成。一个悬而未决的问题是，髓鞘形成除了加速传导速度外，是否还对信息处理有贡献。在这里，我们使用也能很好地预测人类言语理解的范式来分析髓鞘在听觉信息处理中的作用。我们使用听觉皮层中的急性多单位记录，结合行为读数，比较了具有不同程度脱髓鞘的小鼠。我们发现神经元反应的复杂变化反映了疲劳和时间精度缺陷。我们观察到在完全髓鞘化的小鼠中存在部分可区分但相似的缺陷，其中神经胶质细胞不能在代谢上完全支持轴突。我们提出了一个模型，其中髓鞘形成有助于在时间复杂的范式中持续感知刺激，代谢活跃的少突胶质细胞在皮质信息处理中发挥作用。
