To exercise mesmerism on; to spellbind; to enthrall. 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 4, in Mr. Pratt's Patients: Then he commenced to talk, really talk. and inside of two flaps of a herring's fin he had me mesmerized, like Eben Holt's boy at the town hall show. He talked about the ills of humanity, and the glories of health and Nature and service and land knows what all.
White matter develops and changes across our life span in a pattern strikingly different from gray matter. We do not complete the formation of brain myelin until many years after birth, perhaps past 20 years of age; by contrast, we have our full complement of brain neurons at birth.
The gray matter contains the nerve cells. The white matter of the brain is composed of nerve fibers and myelin. The nerve fibers form the connections between the nerve cells. Myelin is a fatty sheath wrapped around nerve fibers. The myelin sheath has two functions: insulation and acceleration of impulse conduction.