Brains under glass

light table with brain specimen slices
National Museum of Health and Medicine
Neuroanatomical collection

A few months ago I took a tour of the National Museum of Health and Medicine's neuroanatomical research collection. It's a remarkable hoard of preserved and sectioned human brains, most sandwiched between plates of glass. Some of the specimens are quite old (the NMHM has specimens dating back to the Civil War). I took a few photos to show you what the facility is like.

storage cabinets for NMHM's neuroanatomical collection

The cabinets above house trays of glass slides containing serial slices of brains. Shown below are some specimens from the Yakovlev-Haleem collection, one of several neuropathology research collections NMHM maintains. Due to space limitations (NMHM is fairly small), the majority of this collection is actually stored in a warehouse in Gaithersburg, north of DC.

wooden trays of brain sections

The dark brown stain on these specimens reveals fiber tracts (axons or "white matter") while the violet stain on some of the slices indicates the location of cell bodies ("gray matter"). The slices are fairly dark with stain and age, and are best viewed on a light table (as at the top of the post) or through a microscope.

below is a coronal section:

And here are two serial sagittal sections of the right hemisphere, one stained for axons, the other for cell bodies. Many of the brains in this collection are pathological specimens from injured or mentally ill patients, providing the basis to identify morphological abnormalities associated with various medical conditions.

Haven't had enough brains? Although the NMHM collection is not indexed online (they'd probably love the funding to do that!) you can view similar serial sections at Michigan State University's brain atlas page. They have some nice montages of cell and fiber stained slices placed side-by-side with MRI images, so you can easily compare the histology with the living tissue:

human coronal montage
Michigan State University human brain atlas

NMHM is located on the campus of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The research collections are only open by appointment, but the main museum is great (more on that later), and like most DC museums, it's free. Bring a photo ID, though, as you'll be required to sign in at the front desk. And don't forget NMHM has its own blog!