It appears that most of the research assessing the origins of multiple sclerosis (MS) has been focused on the wrong area of the brain. Findings from a team at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School suggest that scientists should look to the brain’s gray matter and less to the white matter that contain the brain’s nerve fibers. When an MS flare-up occurs in a patient, it appears that brain activity is located in the brain’s white matter. However, as researchers assessed in the study of MS patients’ cerebrospinal fluid, there are substantial physiological disruptions in the gray matter, the area in which axons, dendrite and synapses transfer signals between the nerves. “This evidence indicates gray matter may be the critical initial target in MS rather than white matter,” says one of the study’s authors.  “We may have been looking in the wrong area.” Click here to read the full article.