Gray Matter - White Matter

I’ve been following the emerging research about Connectomes, the mapping of connections within the brain. I find it fascinating, especially in relation to differences between male and female brains. My coauthor and I included some of that information in the recently released third edition of our book Your Brain Has a Bent (not a Dent). You no doubt are already familiar with the concept that your brain has both gray matter and white matter. Think of gray matter as the outermost portion of your brain It is filled with neurons where information is processed and stored. Yes, injury to gray matter can create any number of different types of injury. Think of white matter as the pathways that connect everything in the brain. When white matter is damaged, small brain injuries may have devastating effects. More tomorrow on new connectome research that is part of a worldwide scientific effort to map the 100 billion neurons and 1,000 trillion connections in the living human brain: led by the Human Connectome Project and the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at USC.