Yeah, myelination really is a huge improvement. According to Wikipedia [1], the fast pain fibres I mentioned (A-delta) have a conduction speed of 3-30 m/s, and

Yeah, myelination really is a huge improvement. According to Wikipedia [1], the fast pain fibres I mentioned (A-delta) have a conduction speed of 3-30 m/s, and the slow fibres (C) have a speed of 0.5-2.0 m/s. As you can see on that page, there are much faster fibres than those. For some definition of "field", I suppose I do :) I did a minor in cognitive neuropsychology in university, and now I'm doing an internship for a computational neuroscience project. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axon#Types http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axon#Types (Edit: I don't know why we still have slow "C" fibres. I suppose there's no pressure to get rid of them, so they've just stuck around all this time. It probably helps with learning, because it persists for a longer time, whereas the fast signal is more for the immediate reaction... just a guess.)