The researchers, who also studied anxiety in concussion patients who underwent imaging, believe determining these white-matter injuries also could help guide treatment in people who suffer such symptoms, whether they are due to trauma or not.
White matter in the brain is made up of long, finger-like fibers projecting from nerve cells and is covered by a whitish fatty material. While gray matter, the part of our brain without the fatty covering, holds our knowledge, white matter is what connects different regions of gray matter, allowing different parts of the brain to communicate with one another.
Over the past several years, cognitive consequences of concussion have dominated the news. Any association between concussion/mTBI and the development of psychiatric disorders hasn't garnered the same level of attention. Saeed Fakhran, M.D., assistant professor of radiology at Pitt and his team wanted to determine if a trauma to the brain could be found in imaging as an underlying cause of depression or anxiety in certain patients.