grey matter

Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website

Healthy older brains not significantly smaller than younger brains

A study using healthy older adults from Holland's long-term Maastricht Aging Study found that the 35 cognitively healthy people who stayed free of dementia showed no significant decline in gray matter, but the 30 people who showed substantial cognitive decline although still dementia-free showed a significant reduction in brain tissue in the hippocampus and parahippocampal areas, and in the frontal and cingulate cortices. The findings suggest that atrophy in the normal older brain may have been over-estimated in earlier studies, by not screening out people whose undetected, slowly developing brain disease was killing off cells in key areas.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/apa-hob090309.php

Learning to juggle grows white matter

A study in which 24 young adults practiced juggling for half an hour a day for six weeks found that they grew more white matter in the area underlying the intraparietal sulcus. This occurred in all the jugglers, regardless of skill, suggesting it's the learning process itself that is important. Previous research has found that juggling increases grey matter. After four weeks without juggling, the new white matter remained and the amount of grey matter had even increased.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17957-learning-to-juggle-grows-brain-networks-for-good.html

Tetris increases gray matter and improves brain efficiency

In a study in which 26 adolescent girls played the computer game Tetris for half an hour every day for three months, their brains compared to controls increased grey matter in Brodmann Area 6 in the left frontal lobe and BAs 22 and 38 in the left temporal lobe — areas involved in planning complex coordinated movements, and coordinating sensory information. Their brains also showed greater efficiency, but in different areas — ones associated with critical thinking, reasoning, and language, mostly in the right frontal and parietal lobes. The finding points to improved efficiency being unrelated to grey matter increases.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/bc-itg090109.php

Neural changes produced by learning to read revealed

Understanding how our brain structures change as we learn to read is difficult because of the confounding with age and the learning of other skills. Studying adult learners is also problematic because in most educated societies adult illiteracy is typically the result of learning impairments or poor health. Now a new study involving 20 former guerrillas in Colombia who are learning to read for the first time as adults has found that these late-literates showed a number of significant brain differences compared to matched adult illiterates, including more white matter between various regions, and more grey matter in various left temporal and occipital regions important for recognizing letter shapes and translating letters into speech sounds and their meanings. Particularly important were connections between the left and right angular gyri in the parietal lobe. While this area has long been known as important for reading, its function turns out to have been misinterpreted — it now appears its main role is in anticipating what we will see. The findings will help in understanding the causes of dyslexia.

http://www.physorg.com/news174744233.html

Changes in gray matter induced by learning

Three months of training in three-ball cascade juggling was found to be associated with a transient and highly selective increase in gray matter in the occipito-temporal cortex. A follow-up study involving 20 adults confirmed this finding and found that the change in grey matter occurred after only 7 days of training. Neither performance nor exercise alone could explain these changes, and the increase receded when training stopped. The researchers suggest that learning a new task is more critical for the brain to change its structure than continued training of an already-learned task.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0002669

Neural substrate of congenital amusia

Research has shown that musicians have more gray matter in certain regions of the brain involved in language and auditory processing. Now a study of tone-deaf people reveals that congenital amusia, thought to be due to a severe deficit in the processing of pitch information, is also associated with differences in gray matter distribution. Tone-deaf individuals had a thicker cortex in the right inferior frontal gyrus and right auditory cortex. This may be due to abnormal neuronal migration or atypical cell pruning during development.

Hyde, K.L. et al. 2007. Cortical Thickness in Congenital Amusia: When Less Is Better Than More. The Journal of Neuroscience, 27(47), 13028-13032.

http://www.physorg.com/news117303842.html

IQ-related brain areas may differ in men and women

An imaging study of 48 men and women between 18 and 84 years old found that, although men and women performed equally on the IQ tests, the brain structures involved in intelligence appeared distinct. Compared with women, men had more than six times the amount of intelligence-related gray matter, while women had about nine times more white matter involved in intelligence than men did. Women also had a large proportion of their IQ-related brain matter (86% of white and 84% of gray) concentrated in the frontal lobes, while men had 90% of their IQ-related gray matter distributed equally between the frontal lobes and the parietal lobes, and 82% of their IQ-related white matter in the temporal lobes. The implications of all this are not clear, but it is worth noting that the volume of gray matter can increase with learning, and is thus a product of environment as well as genes. The findings also demonstrate that no single neuroanatomical structure determines general intelligence and that different types of brain designs are capable of producing equivalent intellectual performance.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-01/uoc--iim012005.php
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050121100142.htm

Chronic back pain shrinks 'thinking parts' of the brain

A new study has found chronic back pain shrinks the brain by as much as 11% — equivalent to the amount of gray matter lost in 10 to 20 years of normal aging. Loss in brain density is related to pain duration, indicating that 1.3 cubic centimeters of gray matter are lost for every year of chronic pain. The study compared 26 participants with chronic back pain for more than a year with matched normal subjects.

Apkarian, A.V., Sosa, Y., Sonty, S., Levy, R.M., Harden, R.N., Parrish, T.B. & Gitelman, D.R. 2004. Chronic Back Pain Is Associated with Decreased Prefrontal and Thalamic Gray Matter Density. Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 10410-10415.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-11/nu-cbp111504.php

Learning languages increases gray matter density

An imaging study of 25 Britons who did not speak a second language, 25 people who had learned another European language before the age of five and 33 bilinguals who had learned a second language between 10 and 15 years old found that the density of the gray matter in the left inferior parietal cortex of the brain was greater in bilinguals than in those without a second language. The effect was particularly noticeable in the "early" bilinguals. The findings were replicated in a study of 22 native Italian speakers who had learned English as a second language between the ages of two and 34.

Mechelli, A., Crinion, J.T., Noppeney, U., O'doherty, J., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R.S. & Price, C.J. 2004. Neurolinguistics: Structural plasticity in the bilingual brain. Nature, 431, 757.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3739690.stm

Intelligence based on the volume of gray matter in certain brain regions

Confirming earlier suggestions, the most comprehensive structural brain-scan study of intelligence to date supports an association between general intelligence and the volume of gray matter tissue in certain regions of the brain. Because these regions are located throughout the brain, a single "intelligence center" is unlikely. It is likely that a person's mental strengths and weaknesses depend in large part on the individual pattern of gray matter across his or her brain. Although gray matter amounts are vital to intelligence levels, only about 6% of the brain’s gray matter appears related to IQ — intelligence seems related to an efficient use of relatively few structures. The structures that are important for intelligence are the same ones implicated in memory, attention and language. There are also age differences: in middle age, more of the frontal and parietal lobes are related to IQ; less frontal and more temporal areas are related to IQ in the younger adults. Previous research has shown the regional distribution of gray matter in humans is highly heritable. The findings also challenge the recent view that intelligence may be a reflection of more subtle characteristics of the brain, such as the speed at which nerve impulses travel in the brain, or the number of neuronal connections present. It may of course be that all of these are factors.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/07/040720090419.htm
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-07/uoc--hid071904.php

Growing evidence cerebellum involved in language

An imaging study of children with selective problems in short term phonological memory and others diagnosed with specific language impairment (and matched controls) found that those with selective STPM deficits and those with SLI had less gray matter in both sides of the cerebellum compared to the children in the control groups. This supports growing evidence that the cerebellum, an area of the brain once thought to be involved only in the control of movement, also plays a role in processing speech and language.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-11/sfn-ssb111103.php

Maturation of the human brain mapped

The progressive maturation of the human brain in childhood and adolescence has now been mapped. The initial overproduction of synapses in the gray matter that occurs after birth, is followed, for the most part just before puberty, with their systematic pruning. The mapping has confirmed that this maturation process occurs in different regions at different times, and has found that the normal gray matter loss begins first in the motor and sensory parts of the brain, and then slowly spreads downwards and forwards, to areas involved in spatial orientation, speech and language development, and attention (upper and lower parietal lobes), then to the areas involved in executive functioning, attention or motor coordination (frontal lobes), and finally to the areas that integrate these functions (temporal lobe). "The surprising thing is that the sequence in which the cortex matures appears to agree with regionally relevant milestones in cognitive development, and also reflects the evolutionary sequence in which brain regions were formed."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-11/sfn-smm110803.php

Imaging study confirms link between exercise and cognitive function

A number of studies have suggested a link between exercise and cognitive function in older adults, but now an imaging study shows that there are actual anatomical differences in the brains of physically fit versus less fit older adults (over 55). Specifically, they found very distinct differences in the gray and white matter in the frontal, temporal, and parietal cortexes. With aging, these tissues shrink, a reduction closely matched by declines in cognitive performance. Fitness, it appears, slows that decline. A related study, published in March, suggests that women may benefit more from exercise than men.

Colcombe, S.J., Erickson, K.I., Raz, N., Webb, A.G., Cohen, N.J., McAuley, E. & Kramer, A.F. 2003. Aerobic Fitness Reduces Brain Tissue Loss in Aging Humans. Journal of Gerontology: Series A: Biological and Medical Sciences, 58, M176-M180.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-01/uoia-sif012703.php

More grey matter in the auditory cortex of musicians' brains

New research augments earlier findings concerning the amount and distribution of gray matter in the brains of professional musicians. It now appears that musicians also have an increased volume of grey matter in the Broca's area, an area of the brain involved in the production of language. A critical factor appears to be the number of years devoted to musical training - at least for musicians under the age of 50. The research supports recent suggestions that musicians process music like an additional language.

Sluming, V., Barrick, T., Howard, M., Cezayirli, E., Mayes, A. & Roberts, N. 2002. Voxel-Based Morphometry Reveals Increased Gray Matter Density in Broca's Area in Male Symphony Orchestra Musicians, NeuroImage, 17(3), 1613-1622.

Significant brain differences between professional musicians trained at an early age and non-musicians

Research has revealed significant differences in the gray matter distribution between professional musicians trained at an early age and non-musicians. It is most likely that this is due to intensive musical training at an early age, although it is also possible that the musicians were born with these differences, which led them to pursue musical training.

Schlaug, G. & Christian, G. Paper presented May 7 at the American Academy of Neurology's 53rd Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-05/AAoN-Mtdc-0705101.php

Calculation difficulties in children of very low birthweight

Learning difficulties, including problems with numeracy, are common in Western populations. Many children with learning difficulty are survivors of preterm birth. Although some of these children have neurological disabilities, many are neurologically normal. A neuroimaging study of neurologically normal adolescent children who had been born preterm at 30 weeks gestation or less found an area in the left parietal lobe where children without a deficit in calculation ability have more grey matter than those who do have this deficit.

Isaacs, E.B., Edmonds, C.J., Lucas, A. & Gadian, D.G. (2001). Calculation difficulties in children of very low birthweight: A neural correlate. Brain, 124 (9, 1701-1707.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1512000/1512664.stm

Gray matter may decline from adolescence, but white matter keeps growing until our late forties

Brain scans of 70 men, ages 19 to 76 confirms that the brain's gray matter, the cell bodies of nerve cells, declines steadily from adolescence. But surprisingly, the white matter, the fatty material that insulates the long extending branches of the nerve cells and makes nerve signals move faster, in the frontal parts of the brain appears to grow at least until the late 40's, before beginning to decline. The growth of white matter may improve the brain's ability to process information.

Bartzokis, G., Beckson, M., Lu, P.H., Nuechterlein, K.H., Edwards, N. & Mintz, J. 2001. Age-Related Changes in Frontal and Temporal Lobe Volumes in Men: A Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 58, 461-465.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/22/health/22VITA-3.html

Mental faculties unchanged until the mid-40s

A large-scale study of mental abilities in adults found that mental faculties were unchanged until the mid-40s, when a marked decline began and continued at a constant rate. The ability to remember words after a delay was especially affected. Accuracy did not seem to be affected, only speed.

The paper was presented to a British Psychological Society conference in London.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4108165,00.html