Brain Collage

I found an interesting brain collage on Flickr that I wanted to post here. I emailed its creator Jason Ramsay and here is an exerpt from his letter to me.

Happy to let you use it for your blog. The photo is a
collage of images that I made using the program MRIcro. It
is a sequence of the same slice of white matter, taken from
a series of scans I made using diffusion tension imaging.

I think it is important for your blog, for these reasons:

1) People underestimate the importance of white matter in
learning. WM is the cable that connects all portions of the
brain.
2) If you lose cable, your brain starts to have to work
much harder to process information.
3) If you work past capacity, you start showing
neurocognitive deficits.
4) White matter can be eroded by chronic stress. Its
development can be hindered by chronic stress or neglect
(e.g., impoverished children).
5) I really think that intelligence is in large part
dictated by the robustness of the white matter.

All food for thought for your blog. If you want to learn
more about stress and the brain (or, for example, poverty
and its effects on the brain), check out the work of Robert
Sapolsky.