In mice whose ears were blocked, cells in the auditory nerve started to use their supplies of neurotransmitter more freely. They depleted their reserves of these chemicals rapidly each time a new auditory signal came in, and they decreased the amount of space within the cells that housed sac-like structures called vesicles -- biological storage tanks where neurotransmitter chemicals are kept. "When it's quiet, the demands on the auditory nerve cells are not as great," Xu-Friedman says. "So it makes sense that you would see these changes: You no longer need as much neurotransmitter, so why invest in a lot of storage? If you're not that active, you don't need a big gas tank. And you're not as afraid to use up what you have. This is one plausible explanation for what we observed." The changes in cellular structure and behavior were the opposite of what Xu-Friedman team's saw in a previous study that placed mice in a consistently noisy environment. In that project -- faced with an unusually high level of noise -- the mice's auditory nerve cells started to economize their resources, conserving supplies of neurotransmitter while increasing the storage capacity for the chemicals. "It looks like these effects are two sides of the same coin, and they might be the first hints of a general rule that nerve cells regulate their connections based on how active they are," Xu-Friedman says. - www.sciencedaily.com