Brain powered research
Danielle Cécyre wants your brain. Keep it for as long as you need it, but once you're done, she'll be happy to send somebody over to pick it up.
Cécyre is the coordinator of the Douglas Hospital's Brain Bank. The bank stores 1,030 brains and supplies researchers at McGill and throughout Quebec with tissue samples used in studies into an assortment of neural diseases. But the bank is running into a problem--it doesn't have enough disease-free gray matter to provide scientists with an adequate supply of "control" brains. When you're examining a diseased brain to try to determine the characteristics of Alzheimer's or schizophrenia, it helps to compare it to healthy brains to see where the differences lie.
"Individuals who have [neural illnesses] often find out about us and they're sensitive to our needs. But people who have never had these sorts of problems don't even know we exist," says Cécyre.
The brain bank is supported by funding from the Fonds de recherche en santé du Québec and by private donations. Tissues from the bank have been used in studies on multiple sclerosis, depression and Parkinson's disease, and the bank has aided research projects in the U.S., Europe and Japan.
"If someone wants to support health research, a donation to our bank could make a real difference to some very important studies," says Cécyre. Anyone interested in using their head for a good cause can call the Douglas at 761-6131 and ask to speak to someone at the Brain Bank.
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