Neural pathway

A neural pathway, neural tract, or neural face, connects one part of the nervous system with another via a bundle of axons, the long fibers of neurons. A neural pathway that serves to connect relatively distant areas of the brain or nervous system is usually a bundle of neurons, known collectively as white matter. A neural pathway that spans a shorter distance between structures, such as most of the pathways of the major neurotransmitter systems, is usually called grey matter.

Naming of neural pathways

The first named pathways are evident to the naked eye even in a poorly preserved brain, and were named by the great anatomists of the Renaissance using cadaver material. Examples of these include the great commissures of the brain such as the corpus callosum (Latin, "hard body"; not to be confused with the Latin word "colossus" - the "huge" statue), anterior commissure, and posterior commissure. Further examples of this (by no means a complete list) include the pyramidal tract, crus cerebri (Latin, "leg of the brain"), and cerebellar peduncles (Latin, "little foot of the cerebellum"). Note that these names describe the appearance of a structure but give one no information on its function or location.