Posted by Lesley McCollum
It’s Friday night and my mentor is calling, which can only mean one thing. "We're getting a brain in" she says when I answer the phone. I jump in the car for a late night funeral home run to pick up the brain just harvested from a donor. With brain in hand, I head to the lab. We're never sure when the next one will be coming, but when it does we have to act fast.
Chances are that you have thought about whether
or not you’d like to be an organ donor. But have you ever thought about
donating your brain? As part of my graduate research I help maintain the
Alabama Brain Collection. We receive brain donations from people with a desire
to help advance science after they’re gone. Each donation is valuable and
critical to advancing research, whether from a healthy individual or someone with
a brain disorder wanting to help find a cure for others in the future.
With the brain back in the lab we inspect and
weigh it. Each one is unique with its own characteristics and quirks. We
quickly get it in fixatives or frozen in dry ice to preserve it just how it is.
Then we store it for future experiments where it can be used to help understand
how our brains work and what goes wrong in brain disorders. We are grateful to
those who chose to donate. They are the ones who make our research possible.
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