Thursday, December 03, 2009

Brain, Thinly Sliced

This is a long day in the lab:
We are slicing the brain of the amnesic patient H.M. into giant histological sections. The whole brain specimen has been successfully frozen to -40C and will be sectioned during one continuous session that we expect will last approximately 30 hours (+ some breaks and some sleep in between). The procedure was designed for the safe collection of all tissue slices of the brain and for the acquisition of blockface images throughout the entire block.
Live video of the brain sectioning can be seen here. The brain in question is that of Henry Molaison who had parts of his brain removed to control epileptic seizures, and ended up not being able to form new memories.


3 comments:

Rob said...

I think I have heard more about HM's brain than any other specific brain by far. Sad to think he could never remember what he has contributed to research on the brain.

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