How to ship your brain

Category: Brains and Stuff • Weird
Posted on: April 15, 2008 10:35 AM, by Steve Higgins

Do you have an extra brain sitting around you want to donate? Do you want to trade brains with someone else but they are too far away to do it in person? Is your brain malfunctioning and you need to ship it back to the factory for some repairs or in the worst case - a replacement? If your answer was yes to any of these questions then this is the tutorial for you.

This is what you'll need:

Two clean, dry ziploc plastic bags
(about 22.0 x 30.0 cm)

Plastic bucket with tightly fitting lid
(about 4.0 liters)

Large plastic bag
(about 40.0 x 50.0 cm)

Envelope for documents

Thermosafe polyfoam container
(38.0 x 33.0 x 31.0 cm)

Two refrigerant packs
(17.0 x 10.0 cm)

Wet ice (about 1.0 kg)

Once you have these items just follow these eight straight forward steps and you'll brain will be ready to drop off at your local courier store.

Put the fresh brain (A) in the first ziploc bag.

Ziploc first bag (B).

Place bag (B) in second bag and ziploc it (C).

Place 0.5 kg of wet ice into the bucket and transfer the double-bagged brain onto the ice (D).

Cover double-bagged brain with wet ice (E) and tightly fit the lid on the bucket.

Put big plastic bag into the polyfoam container and place wet ice (about 0.3 kg) into the bag (F).

Transfer sealed bucket into plastic bag of the container, onto the ice and add refrigerant packs (G).

Close plastic bag (H), put polyfoam lid in place, add documents and close cardboard box.

Surprisingly, this post is actually no joke at all. The New York Brain Bank at Columbia University needs brains to do important research on Alzheimer's and many other diseases of the brain. For more information visit their page (including more pictures of brains). Here's their official line:

The New York Brain Bank (NYBB) at Columbia University was established to collect postmortem human brains to meet the needs of neuroscientists investigating specific psychiatric and neurological disorders.

The tasks of the NYBB include:

* Collection and processing of human postmortem brain samples for research.
* Neuropathological evaluation and diagnosis.
* Storage and computerized inventory of brain samples.
* Distribution of brain samples to investigating clinicians and scientists.

The study of human postmortem brain tissue has unveiled structural and biochemical changes that are contributing to the development of drugs. For example, studies using postmortem human brains have led to the development of genetic tests, identification of neurotransmitters essential to Parkinson disease treatment and cytoskeletal abnormalities in Alzheimer disease.

To study the brains of patients with disorders of the central nervous system, brains from individuals without neurological or psychiatric disorders are necessary for comparison. All individuals are encouraged to donate their brains to science with authorization to remove it as soon as possible after death. The identity of each donor will remain strictly confidential.

NYBB will disburse tissue samples to investigating clinicians or scientists, whose research has been approved by their Institutional Review Board (IRB).

HT: Chris