Our neurons are highly interconnected computers that receive, process, and transmit information. The output cables run here and there, connecting every neuron in some way to form an intricate network that supports the communication of 86 billion computers. Such an extensive, complex network needs help to function properly; that is where the other 85 billion cells in our brain come in.¹ 

These are our support cells, acting as the brain’s network technicians. At least seven types of these cellular workers manage signal transfer in the brain.² Together, they service all the computers and their connecting cables to ensure optimal signal transfer throughout the brain. The network technicians are the supporting cast taking care of the infrastructure that carries our neural traffic. Neurons and their output cables form a complex network, and support cells help keep it operational. 

The support cells also play a unique role in managing signal speed on the output cables. One type, oligodendrocytes, install material on the wires that fire the most, enabling them to send signals faster.³ Daniel Coyle, the author of The Talent Code, calls them broadband installers because they improve signal speed on every cable they touch. 

They all have the same design, acting as rogue sentinels floating through quantum space with 10-20 tentacle-like extensions that attach to surrounding cables.⁴ Their tentacles contact a portion of an output cable, installing a performance-enhancing fatty material called myelin. The ends of the extensions excrete myelin in layers, wrapping around a .1 millimeter section of cable forty to fifty times over days and weeks.⁵ 

When a segment is fully wrapped with the fatty substance, it resembles a sausage.  A single cable has many cross-sections that can become sausages. When a neuron has every section of its cable fully wrapped, it looks like a string of sausages.⁶  Each broadband installer has 10-20 extremities connecting with surrounding cables, making speed-boosting fat sausages. They are sausage makers moving through quantum space, serving an area of 20, 30, 40, or even 50 neighboring cables. ⁷  

When a cable is bare, it sends a signal at 20 mph, but when it has a whole string of sausages, the max speed reaches 270 mph.⁸  By strategically adding ‘sausages’ on cables that fire the most, our broadband installers boost information processing between neurons by 3000 times.⁹ This strategic enhancement empowers us to improve at what we do the most. 

When we are born, most of our neurons lay bare because they are relatively new, and our activity-dependent installers have not yet had the chance to add myelin to them. As we age and neurons fire through experience, our broadband installers are sent out in waves of millions to improve the cables that send the most signals. By the time we are adults, there is a myelin footprint of cables we unknowingly tune through experience, shaping how we see the world. In adulthood, we are the culmination of what we have done the most, as myelin has been obediently working in the background to tune our reality. 

The broadband installers are unbiased activity-driven sentinels that go where the action is. To them, there is no good or bad; all they know is to add myelin to the cables that fire the most. When we say we can’t do something, we are saying that the installers will not add myelin, which is all they know to do.  They do not care who you are; they work the same way in everyone. If you do something enough, regardless of what it is, the installers will add myelin, improving your proficiency. Life is not personal; it is cellular, and the broadband installers will make us the best at what we do most, no questions asked. With this new knowledge, we can make myelin work for us and achieve anything we desire at any time in our lives.