how you bank a brain

摘要

For about a year, I've worked at the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, which stores around 3,000 brains for research. When a donor dies, we have only 48 hours to process their gray matter. An on-call pathologist-we have an extensive U.S. network-removes the organ, packs it in an ice-filled plastic foam box, and ships it to us. Then a courier picks it up at a local airport and rushes it to our labs, where a dissectionist like me steps in. After I photograph the donation, weigh it, and examine it, I cut it in half. Brains are squishy like jelly, so to keep the cells stable, I put one hemisphere into a chemical solution that firms it up. I dissect the other side into hundreds of little pieces and freeze them in liquid nitrogen.