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.
White matter is located at the base of the brain between the cerebellum and the brainstem. It is made of long nerve fibers called axons. The axons are insulated by myelin, sheaths of fat that give the region the white color for which it is named. The myelin helps speed up the transmission of signals along the axons.