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Averick
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11 Aug 2008, 8:49 pm

I had an MRI done some time ago and curious about the findings..

What does too much white-matter mean, especially in this senario,
being male and autistically minded, when conventionally I thought
most of us (men) had more gray-matter??

Just wondering if anyone had any ideas, thanks.



LostInSpace
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11 Aug 2008, 9:26 pm

Didn't they speculate on the reason for it, or whether or not it was cause for concern? I know that the CT scans and MRIs I've had always include at least the first piece of information. What did your doctor say? It may not necessarily mean anything- my abnormal results never did (too much red marrow among other things). People's bodies are all different, and you often find out how different only incidentally through scans. There is actually lots of benign variation.



2ukenkerl
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11 Aug 2008, 9:43 pm

Some CLAIM the white matter is simply hardwired grey matter(less plastic), but others say it is like the wiring, and nothing more(more reliable communication but, perhaps, less to communicate with.

Frankly, the second theory seems more consistant with current thought.

Who's to say you have "too much" though?

BTW some parts of female brains(Like the corpus callosum) are wrapped better, so they are whiter, and generally people say female brains are smaller, so they might APPEAR to be more white, but I haven't heard of them having more white matter.



Aquamarine_Kitty
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11 Aug 2008, 9:52 pm

long link

In this article, and a few other articles I've seen, studies have shown that autistics have more white matter in areas related to higher-order processing, especially in the right hemisphere, and as a result the left and right hemisphere are poorly connected.

Very interesting.....


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velodog
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11 Aug 2008, 9:59 pm

Maybe it will turn gray as you get older. :D



LostInSpace
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11 Aug 2008, 10:10 pm

velodog wrote:
Maybe it will turn gray as you get older. :D


Ha ha! :lol:



Averick
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11 Aug 2008, 11:34 pm

I thought maybe it was because I have more of a feminine mind, one could say.
I took an empathy test once and scored perfectly on it; and it wasn't easy!
Maybe there should be a 'extreme female brain?' :)



willem
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12 Aug 2008, 1:55 am

As I've understood it, autistics have more grey matter and less white matter than NT's, on average. Interestingly, excessive liars show the opposite picture: extra white and less grey. You could say that if your brain is a country, then your grey matter forms the streets within towns (the various parts of your brain), while your white matter forms the highways between the towns (connecting the various parts with each other). So, grossly speaking, our brains have really good parts, but the parts don't work very well together. NT's, on the other hand, have crappy parts which work together really well... :)


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Averick
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12 Aug 2008, 11:35 am

well, that's comforting.. :?



UndercoverAlien
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12 Aug 2008, 12:13 pm

are there scans for autism brains?
lol what for?



Averick
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12 Aug 2008, 12:24 pm

Sure, you can enter a study..



alba
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12 Aug 2008, 5:32 pm

willem wrote:
As I've understood it, autistics have more grey matter and less white matter than NT's, on average. Interestingly, excessive liars show the opposite picture: extra white and less grey. You could say that if your brain is a country, then your grey matter forms the streets within towns (the various parts of your brain), while your white matter forms the highways between the towns (connecting the various parts with each other). So, grossly speaking, our brains have really good parts, but the parts don't work very well together. NT's, on the other hand, have crappy parts which work together really well... :)



Very funny. And interesting.