It is an incredible collection which landed this summer at the hospital of Duffel, in the north of Belgium: no less than 3000 brains, fruit of a collection put together by a British neuropathologist between 1951 and 1990. These brains or parts brain (frontal lobes, hippocampus …) bathed in formalin will allow Dr Manuel Morrens, research director of the Belgian hospital, to carry out research on certain diseases such as the Depression and schizophrenia. Indeed, each brain preserved and carefully accompanied by a medical file, allowing to know the disorders from which patients suffered until their death.
Brains intact, unaffected by drugs
“One of the main advantages of working with brains from this era is that for many of them, they were not affected by medical treatments, which did not exist at the time. There, we will be able to study the disease. in its purest form “ underline the doctors.
“It’s very hard to get tissue these days. Usually, we study how the brain works rather through blood samples. There, we can access it directly.”, explains Dr Manuel Morrens to Libre Belgique.
From these thousands of brains, the researchers will take sections, which they will study under a microscope for inflammation that would influence mental disorders.
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