What can be requested from the brain collection?
The Brain Collection contains formalin fixed brains from Danish psychiatric patients collected from 1945 to 1982
All brains have been autopsied and sectioned accordingly; consequently, there are no whole brains in the collection. The tissue is stored as sections in formalin and in paraffin blocks.
Patient data such as age, date of death, and clinical diagnoses are available for each brain. Actual medical records are stored in the Danish National Archive with limited accessibility.
Fact sheet:
- A total of 9,479 brains – some are missing due to various circumstances.
- All tissue is at least 42 years old.
- All tissue is either stored in formalin or embedded in paraffin.
- The is no fresh frozen tissue.
- There are no brains from people without disease (control brains).
- All information regarding the patients and the tissue is written on paper in Danish and often in handwriting.
- There is no service for ordering tissue for shipping – all projects are collaborations where scientists visit the brain collection and dissect relevant areas of the brains for their project.