The mammalian brain is composed of an outer layer of gray matter, consisting of cell bodies, dendrites, and unmyelinated axons, and an inner core of white matter, consisting primarily of myelinated axons. Recent evidence suggests that microstructural differences between gray and white matter play an important role during neurodevelopment. While brain tissue as a whole is rheologically well characterized, the individual features of gray and white matter remain poorly understood. Here we quantify the mechanical properties of gray and white matter using a robust, reliable, and repeatable method, flat-punch indentation. To systematically characterize gray and white matter moduli for varying indenter diameters, loading rates, holding times, post-mortem times, and locations we performed a series of n=192 indentation tests. We found that indenting thick, intact coronal slices eliminates the common challenges associated with small specimens: it naturally minimizes boundary effects, dehydration, swelling, and structural degradation. When kept intact and hydrated, brain slices maintained their mechanical characteristics with standard deviations as low as 5% throughout the entire testing period of five days post mortem. White matter, with an average modulus of 1.895kPa±0.592kPa, was on average 39% stiffer than gray matter, p<0.01, with an average modulus of 1.389kPa±0.289kPa, and displayed larger regional variations. It was also more viscous than gray matter and responded less rapidly to mechanical loading. Understanding the rheological differences between gray and white matter may have direct implications on diagnosing and understanding the mechanical environment in neurodevelopment and neurological disorders.

In nanoscale contact experiments, it is generally believed that the shear stress at the onset of plasticity can approach the theoretical shear strength of an ideal, defect-free lattice, a trend also observed in idealized molecular dynamics simulations. Here we report direct evidence that plasticity in a dislocation-free volume of polycrystalline aluminium can begin at very small forces, remarkably, even before the first sustained rise in repulsive force. However, the shear stresses associated with these very small forces do approach the theoretical shear strength of aluminium (approximately 2.2 GPa). Our observations entail correlating quantitative load-displacement measurements with individual video frames acquired during in situ nanoindentation experiments in a transmission electron microscope. We also report direct evidence that a submicrometre grain of aluminium plastically deformed by nanoindentation to a dislocation density of approximately 10(14) m(-2) is also capable of supporting shear stresses close to the theoretical shear strength. This result is contrary to earlier assumptions that a dislocation-free volume is necessary to achieve shear stresses near the theoretical shear strength of the material. Moreover, our results in entirety are at odds with the prevalent notion that the first obvious displacement excursion in a nanoindentation test is indicative of the onset of plastic deformation.

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