As you know, Yours Truly is always interested in matters of the brain and especially memory. The man pictured above is a Mr. Henry Molaison. He is one of the most famous amnesiacs in the world and his brain is now the subject of a public dissection being broadcast over the Internet.
Here is the link to the story and the first few paragraphs of the article:
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.”
Dr. Annese carefully dropped the shaving into fluid. The procedure is being shown live online: thebrainobservatory.ucsd.edu/hm_live.php.
