High-Res Images of the Brain ’s White Matter Could Help Researchers Understand MS

I’ve always had an image in my head of what the so-called white matter of the brain — the part most affected by multiple sclerosis (MS) — looks like. Boy, was I wrong! We’ve all seen the sliced images of our brains produced by those noisy MRI machines. They look somewhat like X-rays but show the soft tissue of the body rather than just the bones. Those of us with multiple sclerosis have also — unfortunately — seen lesions on our white matter in the MRI images and perhaps even brain atrophy, or “black holes.” I suppose that we’ve all also imagined what that stuff really looks like, and scientists at Cardiff University’s Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC) in Wales now have an answer for us. Special MRI Reveals Structure of White Matter Their advanced MRI machine, coupled with highly specialized software, has produced computer images of the white matter — just the white matter — of healthy brains and those of people with MS. A BBC health reporter had his scan done and reported on the process and its outcomes this week. There is a short video in the linked report along with several still shots from the scans that show the structure of the brain’s white matter. I guess I had imagined the “cables” and “wires” that make up the white matter to look more like some biological version of a mad doctor’s lab from a sci-fi film. I figured that the axons went from the inside of the brain outward and then down the spinal cord. The images...
Source: Life with MS - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: multiple sclerosis advances in MS research MS Around the Globe MS doctors MS in the news trevis gleason Source Type: blogs