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Brain of Patient H.M. Being Sliced, Streamed Live
buswolley writes "The slicing of the brain of the famous amnesic patient H.M. into giant histological sections is now in full swing, and is being streamed live. The brain specimen is frozen and sectioned whole during one continuous session that is expected to last approximately 30 hours."
Well, it was prior to being posted on /.
Zombie Pr0n.
I'm guessing H.M. is dead, right? Wasn't this a scene out of Hannibal Lecter? Excuse me while I dig up a good chianti and some fava beans.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Some gal named Abby Normal...
For those of you unaware, HM had essentially complete loss of long term memory, but a normal short term/working memory and, curiously the ability to commit long term learning to his motor memory. So, he could learn new motor skills (an example would be juggling, but I do not know if HM learned that particular task), but not high-level memories.
If you're interested in more, then try reading the excellent book: "The man who mistook his wife for his hat".
SJW n. One who posts facts.
http://neurosciences.ucsd.edu/
This is like a foodtv thanksgiving marathon for zombies!
It's not like he would have remembered anything ...
I thought the same thing. Nowhere in the summary does it say that the patient is deceased.
May I suggest a clarification?
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
So I can't help but wonder how they got HM to consent to organ donation ? Did they ask him everyday until his death ? Or perhaps he got "organ donor" tattooed on his body ?
The difference is the commercials.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I am a pathology resident who has done about ten autopsies and from my limited experience I can say that this practice is absolutely necessary. The reasoning behind sectioning the brain is to obtain tissue for histologic examination (i.e. under a microscope). This is done to correlate clinical or radiologic findings with actual disease processes. A simple example would be a case of a small brain hemorrhage, where the radiologist thinks he/she sees some bleeding in a certain area of the brain. On autopsy, we can slice up the brain, take sections to be processed and placed on a glass slide, and actually look at the brain microscopically to confirm that there was indeed hemorrhage in the area of brain suspected by the radiologist. Also, brain sectioning/microscopic evaluation can reveal lesions or abnormalities that are not visible to the radiologist (i.e. early Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc.)
Correct, watching the slicing is not really the point of this. What they do is make a bunch of very thin slices, scan them, then make a 3d computer image which can be viewed in cross section from any angle, or you can use algorithms to isolate given structures in the brain, estimate their volume, etc etc.