White Matter and You

You and your doctor need an understanding of what your white matter damage is in order to have a stroke protocol created for you. I would have expected my doctor to have some idea of my white matter damage based on where my MCA infarct took place. But no, he obviously knew nothing and told me nothing. I may as well have been treated by a doctor from 200 years ago.
http://www.imhome.org/index.php/latest-news/entry/it-all-matters-white-matter-and-you.html
A few selected paragraphs, more at link. Why doesn't your doctor know anything about this?

And it is a lot of signals, some 120.4 quadrillion signals per second. Now, imagine a loss of white matter has cut off some of your functional brain networks due to physical damage. Let’s revisit our math from earlier. As a refresher, here is how we got 120.4 quadrillion:
86 billion neurons x 200 fires per second x 7,000 connections per fire = …
A whopping 120,400,000,000,000,000 or 120.4 quadrillion calculations per second.
Now, say that you lose access to 20% of those neurons…
69 billion neurons (20% reduction) x 200 fires per second x 7,000 connections = …
96,600,000,000,000,000 calculations per second.
Suddenly, you have lost a lot of processing speed per second. So, how will that affect you in daily life (i.e. how many calculations per day have you lost)?
24 hours x 60 minutes/hr x 60 seconds/min = 86,400 seconds/day
120.4 quadrillion x 86,400 = 10,402,560 quadrillion calculations per day
or…
96.6 quadrillion x 86,400 = 8,346,240 quadrillion calculations per day
That is the equivalent to losing 4.8 hours a day. Obviously you don't really lose those hours if you have brain damage, but it highlights how much harder the brain has to work to accomplish a day's worth of tasks. While most people spend that much time tuning out to television and video games, it isn’t as if your brain is shut off; you can still think about something. Just taking away the brain’s ability to talk to itself literally robs you of the ability to think efficiently and effectively. It is easier to understand the cognitive impairments associated with white matter maladies when you see the shear loss of the brain’s potential. It is no wonder that the symptoms seem to affect every aspect of daily life. As Dr. Lonnie Nelson said during his presentation on the DVBIC study results:

White matter connections are long bundles of axons that connect different cortical (gray matter) operators, where basic calculations take place. The loss of white matter connections (which happens in blast injury) is what keeps areas of the cortex from being able to share information across domains. This results in inefficient processing, slowed speed of processing, and problems with sensory integration. Repair of these white matter connections is likely what accounts for the improvements in cognition that we observed after IM.

Although Dr. Nelson was speaking about blast-related brain injuries in veterans, the same principle applies to all brain injuries. Whether you are young or old, severe and traumatic blows to the head affect the whole brain, both grey and white matter. Without the white matter, however, the brain simply can’t speak to itself, which can leave people feeling trapped in their own body. So, how can medical professionals help people protect their valuable white matter?