To Track Mental Illness, Researchers Are Taking the DNA Of Century-Old Brains In Jars
DNA extracted from canned human brains could help researchers studying mental health disorders, if scientists can figure out how to mine it. Preserved brains taken from autopsied patients - some dating to the 1890s - could serve as a new archive of old data related to mental health. Related ArticlesGrowing Schizophrenic Brain Cells In A Dish Helps Neuroscientists Study Mental Illness Up CloseComputer Scientists Induce Schizophrenia in a Neural Network, Causing it to Make Ridiculous Claims8 Percent of Human Genome Was Inserted By Virus, and May Cause SchizophreniaTagsScience, Rebecca Boyle, brain, brains, dna testing, formaldehyde, human brain, mental health, mental illness, preservationThe Indiana Medical History Museum in Indianapolis owns a collection of preserved brains and brain chunks that were taken from mentally ill patients during autopsies. An Indiana University pathologist has been trying to extract DNA from them to search for genes related to schizophrenia and other disorders, a Scientific American...