Dissection Begins on Famous Brain

NY Times science section

Dissection Begins on Famous Brain 
 

By BENEDICT CAREY

Published: December 2, 2009

 

SAN DIEGO — The man who could not remember has left scientists a gift that will provide insights for generations to come: his brain, now being dissected and digitally mapped in exquisite detail.
 
The man, Henry Molaison — known during his lifetime only as H.M., to protect his privacy — lost the ability to form new memories after a brain operation in 1953, and over the next half century he became the most studied patient in brain science.
 
He consented years ago to donate his brain for study, and last February Dr. Jacopo Annese, an assistant professor of radiology at the University of California, San Diego, traveled across the country and flew back with the brain seated next to him on Jet Blue.
 
Just after noon on Wednesday, on the first anniversary of Mr. Molaison's death at 82 from pulmonary complications, Dr. Annese and fellow neuroscientists began painstakingly slicing their field's most famous organ. The two-day process will produce about 2,500 tissue samples for analysis.
 
A computer recording each sample will produce a searchable Google Earth-like map of the brain with which scientists expect to clarify the mystery of how and where memories are created — and how they are retrieved.
 
"Ah ha ha!" Dr. Annese said, as he watched a computer-guided blade scrape the first shaving of gray matter from Mr. Molaison's frozen brain. "One down, 2,499 more to go."
 

full @ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/health/research/03brain.html

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