Making and storing memories requires an exquisite balance of plasticity and stability, combining flexible information coding and high-fidelity storage for accurate recall. How new memories are incorporated into existing networks and if/how these networks remain stable over long periods of time remains an active area of investigation.

Emerging evidence suggests that experience-dependent myelination is an important form of plasticity in the adult brain. In rodents, oligodendrogenesis is reduced after social isolation [1] and increased after motor [2] or spatial learning [3]. Our recent work indicates that context fear learning can rapidly induce oligodendrocyte precursor cell (OPC) proliferation and differentiation into myelinating oligodendrocytes (OLs) in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) [4]. Mice lacking the ability to generate new myelin have impaired recall of remote but not recently formed fear memories. In addition, pharmacological interventions that increase new myelin formation strengthen remote fear memory recall in normal mice [4].

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