White matter scaffold offers new view of the brain
Neural map may explain why some injuries are worse than others
Buried amid the complexity of the human brain, a newly described scaffold carries important messages from one place to another. A map of the scaffold, which reveals intricate connections made by bundles of nerve fibers called white matter tracts, could help explain why some brain injuries are particularly devastating.
The scaffold, described February 11 in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, is distinct from other descriptions of neural connections in the human brain (SN: 2/22/14, p. 22). Instead of focusing on gray matter — swaths of nerve cells themselves — the new network focuses more on their connections. The two approaches are “different ways of getting at the same problem,” says neuroscientist Olaf Sporns of Indiana University Bloomington, who was part of a team that in 2011 described a series of highly linked brain regions called the rich club network. The new connections scaffold is “a very important extension,” he says.