myelinization increases the speed of the action potential along an axon.
Look in a biology textbook and you'll find nice pictures of how myelin wraps
arround the axon and only leaves small regions of "naked" axon. These are
called Nodes of Ranvier and this is where the sodium/potassium pumps are
doing their stuff. In other words, the electrical potential is generated by
the difference in the overall charge inside and outside the membrane. Since
the myelin sheath is covering some of the regions of the axon membrane, the
electrical potential must jump over the myelin to the next Node of Ranvier.
This significantly increases the speed of action potentials.
Multiple sclerosis is believed to be caused by immune cells invading the
nerves and destroying the myelin sheaths. This causes a significant
decrease in speed of electric potentials along the axons, thus triggering a
variety of symptoms.
Hope this helped. If you need me to clarify any of this, feel free to email
me.
kpotikya at ucsd.edu
Christian Guttmann <x98-cgu at nada.kth.se> wrote in message
news:373F2C0E.125A7267 at nada.kth.se...
> Mhm, I know that this substance improves Actionpotentials, but
> how. What magic kind of stuff is this? How does it exactly work?
>> Thank you a lot for you help?
>> I really looking forward to here from you!!
>> Christian
>>> --
> Christian Guttmann Tel. : +46-(0)70 414 99 76
> Professorsslingan 19-119 Email : guttmann at gmx.de> 10405 Stockholm Home Page :
http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~x98-cgu/
> Sweden
>>>
