Henry Molaison's Brain Dissected, Streamed Live
Henry Molaison died at 82, and was one of brain science's most famous patients for 50 years, as scientists struggled to figure out why he could not remember things for longer than 30 seconds. After a year of preparation following his death last year, researchers finally began dissecting his brain yesterday -- and streamed it live on the web.
Henry Molaison (cnn.com)
Scientists were only halfway through the brain as of this afternoon, and say the "marathon through the brain" was going "miraculously well." A camera takes a picture of every slice of the brain, and these images are being posted on the web, too.
Scientists hope that they'll be able to better answer some key questions about the brain, and be able to map it better and correlate structures with specific functions, like memory, after this project.
Tonight researchers are probing deeper in the part of the brain that was removed more than 50 years ago in a surgery that was aimed to cure his epilepsy, but ended up causing his memory problems. He was 27 at the time of the surgery, then could not make memories that lasted longer than about 20 or 30 seconds the remainder of his life.
There were about 17,000 people watching the procedure this afternoon, and the web site had 3 million hits as of today. The 30-hour dissection is supposed to continue until Friday night, and will include about 2,600 brain slices total, according to CNN.
Henry Molaison (cnn.com)Scientists were only halfway through the brain as of this afternoon, and say the "marathon through the brain" was going "miraculously well." A camera takes a picture of every slice of the brain, and these images are being posted on the web, too.
Scientists hope that they'll be able to better answer some key questions about the brain, and be able to map it better and correlate structures with specific functions, like memory, after this project.
Tonight researchers are probing deeper in the part of the brain that was removed more than 50 years ago in a surgery that was aimed to cure his epilepsy, but ended up causing his memory problems. He was 27 at the time of the surgery, then could not make memories that lasted longer than about 20 or 30 seconds the remainder of his life.
There were about 17,000 people watching the procedure this afternoon, and the web site had 3 million hits as of today. The 30-hour dissection is supposed to continue until Friday night, and will include about 2,600 brain slices total, according to CNN.
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