USA: San Diego scientists to create first human brain library - slice by slice

Record ID: 809434

  • Title: USA: San Diego scientists to create first human brain library - slice by slice
  • Date: 8th January 2010
  • Summary: SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA (JANUARY 5, 2010) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) DIRECTOR, THE BRAIN OBSERVATORY, DR JACOPO ANNESE, SAYING: "It's essentially a process of this big motorized slicer carrying this block under a blade and the blade peels one section at a time. You collect it with a paint brush, because it's a delicate way of handling the sections."
  • Embargoed: 23rd January 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Science / Technology
  • Reuters ID: LVADHVDWJ1QH46BNXX51IJU1WXJX
  • Story Text: At The Brain Observatory in San Diego, a team of lab technicians is delicately and painstakingly transferring what looks like thin slices of ginger into vials. But these are not pieces of ginger - this is brain tissue. And not any brain. It belongs to the most famous amnesic of all time: Henry Gustav Molaison, more often referred to in the scientific community by his initials H.M.
    As a young man, Molaison suffered debilitating epileptic seizures. By his early twenties, the seizures' frequency had increased so much that he could no longer work or live alone. In 1953 he underwent experimental surgery that removed the inner part of the lobes on both sides of his brain, including most his hippocampus. The surgery was successful in reducing the frequency of the seizures, but left Molaison unable to form new memories - a condition called severe anterograde amnesia.
    "What makes H.M. unique is that his case happened in the year of modern neuroscience and so he was studied since 1957 pretty much. He was always very pleasant and very willing to work with researchers" says director of The Brain Observatory Dr Jacopo Annese.
    When Molaison died late 2008 at the age of 82, his brain was collected (Molaison had previously agreed to donate it to science) and brought to The Brain Observatory as a very high-profile case to enter Annese's ambitious Brain Library project.
    Annese's Brain Library works with volunteers, both healthy and suffering from documented neurological conditions, who are able to participate in a long-term monitoring program while they are still alive, just like H.M. After their death, they agree to donate their brains to help create an unrivaled database linking the physical organs' unique architecture to their donors' life and medical history.
    At The Brain Observatory, H.M.'s brain was first imaged using multiple MRI protocols, immersed in graded solutions of sugars, embedded in a large block of gelatin, and finally frozen en block. All these steps were necessary to ensure that the brain would be firm enough to be sectioned, an operation that finally took place in December 2009 on the anniversary of H.M.'s death.
    "It's essentially a process of this big motorized slicer carrying this block under a blade and the blade peels one section at a time. You collect it with a brush, a paint brush, because it's a delicate way of handling the sections," explains Annese.
    It was the first time that a whole human brain was sectioned whole in one continuous session. Other innovation: the entire procedure was broadcast live over the internet, with the possibility for anyone to comment and ask questions on Twitter and Facebook. Word spread quickly, and in the end, more than 400,000 people - scientists and non-scientists - had logged in at one point or another to watch H.M.'s brain being sliced.
    The procedure lasted 53 hours and wasn't without challenges - the most nerve-wracking being when one of the freezers that constantly kept the brain in optimum temperature failed in the middle of the first night, forcing Annese to rush back to the lab to fix it. "If something went wrong, how do we explain to a few thousand neuroscientists that we damaged the brain?"
    In the end, the machine created 2,401 slivers of brain, each as thin as a hair. Some sections will be archived in deep freezers for future studies, and some shared with other scientists. A few series are presently being flattened on glass slides and stained to reveal the detailed inner anatomy of the brain, just like restoring the pages of a very fragile and precious manuscript.
    "In the month of January we have planned to make a first series of slices, to stain them to look at anatomical borders because really that's what the scientific community is looking for. To look at the precise borders of the lesion and to look at which areas of the brain have been affected", says Annese.
    Ultimately, the slides will be digitized at an extraordinarily high resolution -- down to individual cells. These images will be used to produce a very precise map of H.M.'s brain that scientists will be able to explore in a way similar to Google Earth. The data will eventually be shared with scientists and with the public online.
    Annese is planning to use the same process and to apply the same principles to study the different brains collected by The Brain Library project, and he hopes that this will lead to new discoveries about the way our body's most complex organ works. "The idea is to provide so many images to allow the observation of so many cases, that we will start making this correlation between structure and function, and beyond that, between our brain and the way that we are in life."
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