X-Message-Number: 16120
From: "Jan Coetzee" <>
Subject: Actually, It Is Brain Surgery 
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 01:09:10 -0400

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Actually, It Is Brain Surgery 

By Leslie Gevirtz 


BELMONT, Mass. (Reuters) - At the Harvard Brain Bank, they take great care with 
their deposits. 


This bank is open 24/7 all year because for a brain to be of value in research 
it must reach the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center within 24 hours of its 
donor's death. 


Made of soft delicate tissue, gray matter easily loses shape if not handled 
carefully and quickly, says Dr. Francine Benes, who heads the institution that 
is known in the world of neuroscience as simply ``The Brain Bank.'' 


Funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the bank receives on average 
300 donations a year and sends out between 5,000 and 6,000 samples to 
researchers working on schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Huntington's disease and
Alzheimer's disease. 


The largest facility of its kind, with more than 5,000 brains, the bank is 
located at McLean Hospital, a sprawling campus some 10 miles (16 km) northwest 
of Boston that has research programs across a wide range of psychiatric 
disorders as well as Alzheimer's disease. 


Its vaults are two rooms. One is lined with huge freezers kept at a minimum of 
minus 112 Fahrenheit (minus 80 degrees Celsius) or colder and each has its own 
backup system in case of a power failure. They contain thousands of precisely 
sliced brain halves. 


``These samples are irreplaceable,'' Benes says as she swings open a door and 
takes a numbered, plastic Baggie from a crowded shelf. It is filled with pink 
pieces that look not unlike frozen slices of cauliflower. 


Industrial gray shelving from floor-to-ceiling lines the room next door. Each 
rack contains row upon row of numbered Rubbermaid and Tupperware containers 
filled with yellowing formaldehyde and the other halves of the brains. 

Each Sample Carefully Detailed 


Along the way, each sample has been categorized, organized and numbered and 
details about its donor's gender, age, health and disease history carefully 
noted in a growing database. But the donor's identity is never revealed. 


Donations are not easy to come by, especially those of normal brains, said 
Benes. 


``Scientists always need normal specimens to use as a benchmark,'' said the 
self-described bench researcher with a passionate interest in schizophrenia. 


``Those whose families don't suffer from a neurological disorder don't really 
think about'' brain donation, she said. People feel differently about this 
particular organ than they do about livers, kidneys, corneas and hearts. Some 
see it as the seat of the soul. 


``Brains are very hard to come by for reasons that no one ever puts into 
words,'' she said. 


The bank does outreach to the medical profession -- mostly nurses because it is 
nurses who usually work most closely with the family. 

``Families trust nurses more than doctors,'' Benes said. 


Most of the donations come from the bank's relations with organ banks. But every
once in a while, there is an unexpected gift. 

HOW TO SHIP A BRAIN! 


``I remember we had a nurse on the phone. She already had the brain, but there 
was nothing to ship it in,'' Benes recalled stepping from her cramped corner 
office. 


``We told her to first go to a liquor store and get a cooler and plenty of ice, 
then get to a hardware store and get a bucket,'' she said. ``Put the brain in a 
couple of plastic bags, pack it in ice in the bucket. Put the bucket in the 
cooler and ship it.'' 

``It came in and was in beautiful shape,'' she said with a smile. 


When a brain arrives, staff work feverishly to preserve as much of the organ as 
possible. After weighing it on a scale similar to those used to weigh produce, 
George Tejada or someone from his dissection staff takes a long bladed kitchen 
knife and cuts the brain along the midline separating the right and left halves.


Both halves are then sliced into 16 precise sections. The sections from one half
are put in formaldehyde and the others placed on coated plates and flash frozen
using liquid nitrogen. The halves are randomly assigned to either the freezer 
or formaldehyde. 


Making a withdrawal from this bank is not easy. Researchers from across the 
United States and Canada must fill out a small mountain of paperwork detailing 
what they hope to find, how they are being funded, and a record of their past 
endeavors. 


The bank scrutinizes both the researcher and the proposed research before 
granting slivers of tissue to the neuroscientist. 


Many of the tissue slices, stained and mounted on slides, are already available 
online digitally reproduced and offered to previously approved researchers at 
the bank's Web site: http:/www.brainbank.mclean.org:8080/ 


Tejada is part of the on call team. He said he does not mind being on call 24 
hours a day and on weekends. 


``The work we do is very important,'' Tejada said. ``The only way to find a cure
to many of the ills that afflict the brain is to study it.'' 


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