Day 5: White matter in the brain significantly changes with age. Axons, the connections between neurons, are usually surrounded by an insulating layer called myelin. But not all the myelin is present at birth.

Instead, neurons become myelinated as we get older, with the prefrontal cortex being the last area to myelinate in young adulthood. That’s what people tend to refer to when they say your cortex matures around 25 years old.

Unfortunately, things go downhill from there. Myelin starts to degenerate towards later adulthood. That works on the last-in, first-out principle, with the prefrontal cortex being the first one to go.

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If you're wondering what this is for, I am updating the backend to monitor new clinical trials for #MultipleSclerosis that feeds this page: https://gregory-ms.com/trials/

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#Neurology #Science #openscience #BotsFightMS #myelin