The Relative Amounts of Grey and White Matter in some Normal and Pathological Brains.

Abstract

The marked complexity of the convolutions of the brain of man, as compared with the lower animals, has suggested to numerous writers that the higher intellectual and other mental faculties characteristic of the human subject are in more or less direct relationship to the amount of grey matter in the brain. Attempts have therefore been made to measure the amount of grey matter in the brains of persons of very different degrees of intelligence and mental development. Owing to the highly complicated nature of the convolutions of the human brain, the method of estimation by direct dissection of the grey matter from the underlying white matter has not been adopted except in the case of a very few brains, most workers having approached the subject by indirect methods. Some observers have directed their attention to the measurement of the surface area of the grey matter, others to the determination of the absolute amount of cortex. Danilewsky, as a result of observations upon the specific gravity of the brain and of the grey and white matter, has calculated that the cortex forms 30 per cent. of the total brain weight. Donaldson, on the other hand, has estimated the grey matter of the hemisphere as forming 50 per cent. of the whole.