Three Mechanisms or Strategies for Increasing Conduction Velocity of Nerve Fibers

Abstract

In the early stage of development of physiology, the leading physiologists, including J. Muller, the teacher of H.L.F. Helmholtz, had visualized the mysterious process that travels along the nerve at such an immense velocity, which could not even be measured. It was Helmholtz (1850) who first determined the conduction velocity of the frog nerve fibers by two series of experiments. He unexpectedly found that the conduction velocity of frog nerve fibers is only about 27 m/s (see Tasaki 1982, pp. 10–13). His historic work opened the way in physiology to study the impulse conduction of nerve fibers.