Gray & White Matter & Brain Damage

According to the first author on the study, they found that damage to gray matter hubs of the brain that are really interconnected with other regions did not show much about how poorly people would do on cognitive tests after brain damage. Conversely, study participants with damage to the densest white matter connections did much worse on cognitive tests. Apparently, this is a rather revolutionary finding since in the past, both scientists and clinicians have tended to focus almost exclusively on the role of gray matter in traumatic brain injuries including stroke. According to the researchers, the take-away from this study is that the connections between brain regions might matter as much if not more so in terms of cognitive ability post brain trauma than the brain regions themselves. Bottom line:  Damage to highly connected regions of white matter in the brain following injury is more predictive of cognitive thinking impairment than damage to highly connected gray matter hubs.