I took a tour of the brain bank 2 years ago - the labs are surprisingly 
ordinary-looking places for somewhere doing such valuable work.

Of course I agreed to donate my brain.

(A relative said he was surprised anyone wanted it ! )

Quoting rayilynlee <[log in to unmask]>:

> From The Times
> August 30, 2008
> 
> Meet the man with 250 brains
> David Dexter uses donated brains to unlock the secrets of Parkinson's 
> disease
> 
> John Naish
> David Dexter pulls from under his lab desk a small lidded bucket, the type 
> that DIY stores use to sell bumper packs of filler. Inside, floating in 
> clear fluid, is a human brain: grey, cold, murky. "This is quite a 
> lightweight one," he says, fishing it into his purple-gloved grasp. "When 
> they first come in they are fresh and pink. This has been soaking in 
> fixative for four weeks." For squeamish laypersons like me, it feels a 
> vaguely macabre way to tackle one of the most common diseases of ageing.
> Dexter, a quiet, shaven-headed scientist, is the man with 251 brains. And he
> 
> would love it if you gave him yours - once you've finished using it. He is 
> the scientific director of the Parkinson's Disease Society Tissue Bank, at 
> Imperial College London. The bank is at the leading edge of British efforts 
> to discover the causes and cures for this debilitating neurological 
> disorder.
> But even highly intelligent clinicians such as Dexter can lack vital grey 
> matter. The bank collects and dissects for study the brains of people who 
> have died with Parkinson's. But it needs just as many "control" brains - 
> those that belong to people who did not apparently have the disease - so 
> that scientists have a direct counterpart of the Parkinson's brain they are 
> studying, in terms of age, gender and time elapsed between death and 
> preservation.
> The bank is funded by the Parkinson's Disease Society at a cost of £25,000 a
> 
> year. Since it opened five and a half years ago, it has collected 250 
> donated brains, only 17 of which are controls. "We are collecting four or 
> five brains a month. We tend to get a peak on cold winter days and summer 
> heat waves," Dexter says. "The lack of control brains is our biggest problem
> 
> because every time we send out tissues, we need to send out control tissues 
> as well. His colleague Kirsten Goldring, who manages the donor programme, 
> adds: "It's odd, but when people sign on with us as controls, they seem to 
> live for ever."
> Related Links
> From hair and bone to breast milk and sperm: eight ways to be a living donor
> A race against time
> The fact that brain tissue certainly does not last for ever is one of the 
> greatest practical challenges facing the bank. As an old medical saying has 
> it: "After death, of all the soft tissues, the brain's the first to vanish, 
> the uterus last." Dexter explains how news of a donor's demise sparks a race
> 
> against time, geography and bureaucracy. "As soon as someone dies, his or 
> her brain cells start dying. We need to get the preservation procedure done 
> quickly. We need to get the brain into the lab within 24 hours. Our 
> co-ordinator is on call 24 hours every day. We've managed to get brains to 
> London on time from places such as Northern Ireland and Jersey." For that to
> 
> happen, all the paperwork must be in order. "It can be infuriating if we 
> don't make it because, for example, a locum doctor only 50 miles down the 
> road won't sign the death certificate and wants to wait until the patient's 
> usual GP is found," says Dexter. The process is expedited if the donor's kin
> 
> know of his or her wishes. The programme has its own donor cards; standard 
> organ-donor cards do not cover brains as they are not going to be used 
> clinically in transplants.
> Anna Lowe, 31, a management consultant living in Balham, South London, is 
> one of the latest non-Parkinson's patients to decide to donate her brain. 
> "My grandfather died three weeks ago at the age of 78," she says. "I had 
> never thought about donating, but just before he died I learnt of his plans.
> 
> He had agreed to donate his brain about three years ago. The awareness of 
> the brain bank motivated me to do it, too. He had told his wife about it, 
> and he had all the right documents lodged. My grandfather was a retired 
> psychiatrist and had treated people with Parkinson's. When he was diagnosed 
> with it, he was very interested to keep up with all the latest research, and
> 
> that's how he learnt about the work of the tissue bank."
> Lowe, whose grandfather's condition was diagnosed about seven years ago, 
> believes that this decision to donate has proved a comfort to her 
> grandmother. "It was something that he very much wanted," she says. "He was 
> quite prag-matic about the physical body, being a doctor, and he valued the 
> research that his brain would help the scientists to do. It was a comfort to
> 
> all of us that him donating his brain could help others." As for her 
> decision to donate, "I didn't have to think too much about it," she says. 
> "If I'm dead, I won't know about it. And I have already signed up as an 
> organ donor for other bits and pieces. I'm quite young and it seems a long 
> way off. It feels like something useful I could do. Dying and being a donor 
> to help others is a wonderful thing. The most important thing is to tell 
> your kin so they are aware of your wishes if they are asked for their 
> consent."
> Dissecting brains is a three-person job
> Over lunchtime sandwiches, Dexter explains how dissecting a donated brain 
> quickly and efficiently is a three-person job. The most important section is
> 
> the substantia nigra, a thumbnail-sized region located at the base of the 
> brain. On a glass laboratory slide it resembles a flattened-out moth. Here 
> the vital chemical, dopamine, is synthesised. It is responsible for creating
> 
> control of our finer physical movements. Dexter shows me how, on a slide of 
> a section of a healthy substantia nigra, there is a clear black line where 
> the dopamine-producing cells are sited. On a slide from a Parkinson's 
> sufferer's brain, that black line is a light grey smudge. "This is the main 
> area affected by Parkinson's," says Dexter, "So you've got lots of 
> researchers wanting to look at the same small thing."
> By comparing Parkinson's brains with normal brains, scientists can tell 
> which cell-death processes are caused by disease, and which are part of 
> ageing. This helps scientists to understand the condition better, which 
> enables them to develop more effective drugs and gene therapies. But brains 
> are mysterious things. They come in very different sizes and shapes. The 
> smallest donated adult brain was 700g.
> "The largest was more than twice that size," smiles Dexter. "We do play a 
> guessing game about the gender, but generally female brains are smaller." 
> Goldring feels compelled to interject: "They are more compact and better 
> organised." Regardless of their gender, brains remain something of a mystery
> 
> to medics while we are still alive. Even a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease 
> is often wrong, as Dexter's team frequently discovers. "We do a detailed 
> neurophysiological assessment of the brain to see whether they really did 
> have Parkinson's. Only about 70 per cent of the people diagnosed as dying 
> from the disease actually had it," he says. "Others have conditions such as 
> progressive supernuclear palsy. Some have Alzheimer's as well as 
> Parkinson's: it can be a multitude of syndromes."
> Even apparently normal brains can harbour surprises, Dexter adds. "Often the
> 
> control brains can give us an insight into the pre-symptomatic stages of 
> Parkinson's. About 7 per cent of people in the general population have 
> Parkinson's at the pre-clinical stage. But their owners frequently don't 
> know get to know this, as many of them die of something else before they 
> ever go on to develop Parkinsonian symptoms."
> "We just cut a flap at the back of the head"
> I ask Dexter something that fascinates me - whether any people fear that by 
> donating their brains, they might lose a part of their souls. He doesn't see
> 
> this as an issue - and it's not something that will prevent him from 
> donating his brain. But vanity can prove a potential obstacle, he says: 
> "Some possible donors are worried that their bodies will be disfigured and 
> they won't be able to be displayed in an open casket. But looking at the 
> dead donor's face, you would never know. We just cut a flap at the back of 
> the head, peel the skin over the top, cut a hole in the top of the skull, 
> take the brain out, and then put everything back." He mimes the procedure, 
> then glances at my whitening face and smiles: "Oh," he says, "You're still 
> having your lunch."
> For more information on becoming a donor, contact the UK Parkinson's Disease
> 
> Society Tissue Bank: 0207-594 9732, [log in to unmask] 
> www.parkinsons.org.uk
> Brains in numbers
> 120,000 people with Parkinson's in the UK
> 30,000 members of the Parkinson's Disease Society
> 600 number of people currently signed up to donate their brains
> -80C optimum temperature for preserving a donated brain
> 
> Rayilyn Brown
> Director AZNPF
> Arizona Chapter National Parkinson Foundation
> [log in to unmask] 
> 
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