The Brain Collection

The Brain Collection has significant scientific value due to its huge size and varied pathology - including some rare diseases. Furthermore, most of the 9.000 brains come from people who have not received any modern medical treatment, and thereby enables researchers to investigate the effect of modern treatment. The materials can be used to examine the effect of various diseases on brain anatomy, to investigate diagnostic approaches for brain diseases, and to analyse genetic mutations and epigenetic DNA/RNA modifications in the brain tissue of individuals with different conditions.

To understand how a disease affects the brain, we need to be able to physically examine the brain tissue. However, it is usually impossible to take a sample of tissue from the brain of a person who is alive and addition to that, few people with psychiatric disorders or dementia are autopsied when they die. Studies of animal brains are also less helpful as the human brain has functions, we believe are unique to humans.This means that large number of brains in the collection is a remarkable source of information, to bridge the gap between clinical and experimental studies on animals and tissue cultures.

The Brain Collection is already well-documented in the form of protocol books and patient records, and one of the goals with The Brain Collection is to digitize the collection and make this substantial resource available as a central online biobank for national and international scientists and health researchers.