If an epilepsy patient needs brain surgery, their brain surgeon often extracts a piece of tissue the size of a sugar cube from the outermost layer to access the regions responsible for the seizures. This excised lump is typically discarded as medical waste since it is far from the diseased site. But to neuroscientists like Jonathan Ting, Ph.D., this brain nugget is “the most precious piece of matter in the universe.”
Ting, Associate Investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a division of the Allen Institute, and his team receive brain tissue removed during surgery and willingly donated by patients to uncover the workings of living human brain cells. Ting and others at the Allen Institute for Brain Science aim to build a “periodic table” of brain cell types to categorize the brain by its cellular building blocks. Understanding what happens at the cellular level can help scientists better understand the larger experiences in the mind, including learning, consciousness, and even psychedelic experiences.
