What roles do white and gray matter play in cognition? How would higher or lower amounts of each manifest?

Question

What roles do white and gray matter play in cognition? How would higher or lower amounts of each manifest?

In: Biology

Answer 1

White matter is mostly the long axions of nerve cells, which is effectively the high speed electrical connection between different areas of the brain. Gray matter is mostly the cell bodies (nucleus, most of the organelles) plus the dendrites of the nerve cells, where most of the incoming neurotransmitter-based connections are located and where most of the “computation” takes place in your brain.

If each lobe of gray matter is a computer, white matter is the internet fibers between each computer.

And as you’d expect, the more gray matter you have, the smarter you are. Since gray matter works best on the surface of your brain with the white matter near the middle, your brain needs as much surface area as possible – thus the wrinkles.