This morning, Mr. F and I traveled down the coast to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where our friend Skirmantas Janusonis kindly provided an opportunity to photograph six human brains he and colleague Scott Grafton were preparing to use for the Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience.
- Skirmantas Janusonis and I Examine Six Human Brains
According to Skirmantas, times have changed since I took my monster core course in Neuroanatomy at UCLA from the remarkable Arnold Scheibel. For that course, each student was given a human brain to dissect, which was a truly amazing experience. I had dissected sheep’s brains in my undergraduate lab with Darrell Dearmore, but having an opportunity to work with a human brain was fascinating. Unfortunately, it appears that these opportunities are more difficult to come by these days, and Skirmantas said it was no easy matter to obtain the six brains he had. I have to say that I don’t miss the eau de formalin of the 70s, although the ethanol used to preserve these brains was a bit tough on the olfactory system, too. On the drive home, I kept asking Mr. F if I smelled like ethanol, and I quickly changed my clothes when I got home.
The first thing that strikes me, especially when I have a chance like this to see several brains at the same time, is that there is no “textbook” brain. All of our beautiful artistic renderings of the brain for Discovering Biological Psychology make it look like everybody has a clearly identified central sulcus and similar convolutions. Skirmantas’ six brains varied widely in size and shape, which is so important for students to see. It was also interesting to see where little chunks of brain had been removed during the autopsy process. Although the brains were from “healthy,” albeit deceased people, I found myself speculating about what symptoms lead the physicians conducting the autopsy to take a chunk out of the temporal lobe of one, and out of the cerebellum on another. Then of course, the psychologist is me gets to wondering, what kind of person was this? Happy? Sad? Kind? Cruel? Loved? Lonely? Perhaps that is why I ended up in psychology, instead of medicine.
We hope to use some of our photographs in upcoming textbooks, so stay tuned! For those of you interested in attending Summer Institute, this year’s session is closed, but you may want to check back in time to sign up for next year’s. The themes include “are humans fundamentally different than other animals?” and “individuality.” The presenters list reads like a “who’s who” in neuroscience. Hmmm, maybe I’ll sign up next year, too!
