Neuroscience

3D brain mapping opens a window to the aging brain

By mapping brain activity in three dimensions, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have achieved a more detailed picture of how the brain changes with age.

Neuroscience

Scientists record powerful signal in the brain's white matter

The human brain is made up of two kinds of matter: the nerve cell bodies (gray matter), which process sensation, control voluntary movement, and enable speech, learning and cognition, and the axons (white matter), which connect ...

Neuroscience

'Bioprinting' living brain cell networks in the lab

Monash University Engineering researchers have successfully used "bioinks" containing living nerve cells (neurons) to print 3D nerve networks that can grow in the laboratory and transmit and respond to nerve signals. The ...

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White matter

White matter is one of the two components of the central nervous system and consists mostly of myelinated axons. White matter tissue of the freshly cut brain appears pinkish white to the naked eye because of myelin is composed largely of lipid and a few percent of capillaries. Its white color is due to its usual preservation in formaldehyde. A 20 year-old male has around 176,000 km of myelinated axons in his brain.

The other main component of the brain is grey matter (actually pinkish tan due to blood capillaries). A third colored component found in the brain that appears darker due to higher levels of melanin in dopaminergic neurons than its nearby areas is the substantia nigra.

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