The first database on the brain made with ‘live’ human neurons is ONLINE : obtained from waste tissues deriving from the neurosurgical interventions of 39 patients, they have been kept in activity outside the human body for three days, so as to be able to analyze the anatomy and functionality. The study, carried out by the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, United States, made it possible to derive the genetic profile of 16,000 neurons and information about the electrical activity of 300 neurons in the cerebral cortex, of which 100 were even reconstructed in 3D.

The Allen Brain Atlas database, accessible to all, opens up a new “window” on the human brain, which until now had been studied using electroencephalograms, imaging techniques (such as magnetic resonance imaging) and tissue samples taken from a corpse. The first researches on brain samples taken during neurosurgical interventions date back to the Seventies, but so far no one had managed to put together such a huge amount of material as the Allen Institute.

The project was carried out thanks to the collaboration of several hospitals in Seattle, where patients subjected to neurosurgical interventions for epilepsy and brain tumors were asked to give donations of brain pieces (as big as sugar cubes) that otherwise would have been thrown away anyway as hospital waste after the operation.

The neuroscientists intend to continue their work to further expand the archive, with the aim of examining in depth the connections between neurons. In future the information on cells could be crossed with the patient’s medical records, in order to highlight possible correlations with the functionality of the brain before and after the intervention.