NIH Radio
White Matter and Learning in the Brain – 1
Narrator: This is NIH Health Matters. I’m Joe Balintfy. Scientists studying the brain are learning more about how we learn. Dr. Douglas Fields, an NIH neuroscientist, says the brain has two kinds of tissue: gray matter and white matter.
Fields: Gray matter, most people have heard of—that’s the surface layer of the brain where the neurons and synapses and dendrites are located—but the connections between neurons are made possible through wire-like axons, so this is the white matter region of the brain which is composed of millions of bundles of axons that connect neurons and gray matter together.
Narrator: He says white matter may play a more important role in learning than previously thought. Learn more at www.nih.gov. Health Matters is produced by the National Institutes of Health, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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