You cannot look at a child and tell if he or she has a learning disability. There is no outward sign of the disorder. So some researchers began looking at the brain itself to learn what might be wrong. In one study, researchers examined the brain of a learning­disabled person, who had died in an accident. They found two unusual things. One involved cells in the left side of the brain, which control language. These cells normally are white. In the learning­disabled person, however, these cells were gray. The researchers also found that many of the nerve cells were not in a line the way they should have been. The nerve cells were mixed together.