By Josh Torres | Staff Reporter
Quite possibly one of the most weird and wonderful things you can do at WSU Vancouver is hold preserved human brains.
Dr. Dale Fortin, program leader for the integrative physiology and neuroscience program, oversees the brains which the university received around eight years ago after putting in a request at a brain bank. He brings the brains to his psychology and neuroscience classes as well as events, including outreach at high schools and homeschool groups, with the goal of sparking conversation and getting students curious.
“The brains are out first day of class,” said Fortin. “So as I’m watching the students, I’m literally just putting my gloves on, nonchalantly picking these brains up out of the little brain bucket and then putting them on trays, in hopes that that’s going to stimulate questions, and it usually does… [We] also had them out for the Halloween event we had.”
Fortin noted that the brains are firm because they have been preserved by a chemical treatment that links the proteins in cells together.
“I think [students] are kind of surprised at how firm it is, but that’s not the case in your cranium,” he said. “So that usually leads to questions, but they usually want to take selfies, or they want to take a picture of them holding the brain. So there’s usually pretty good reactions. A lot of them are like, ‘I can’t believe I’m actually holding a brain.’”
The brains frequently draw a crowd. Students often ask if people with bigger brains are smarter, leading to more conversation and factoids from Fortin.
“I always, you know, kind of point to Einstein’s brain, which is actually, on average, smaller than the typical brain,” he said. “There’s about 400 miles of blood vessels packed within that brain that they’re holding. That’s a lot. Some people will ask, ‘Well, how many cells make up the brain?’ Turns out it’s about 86 billion cells on average. And I always tell students, ‘You know, you can’t even count to 1 billion in your life, right? Let alone, like, the billions.’ That’s just a big number.”
While the brain donors are anonymous, one is a 75-year-old woman from Stevenson, WA, and the other is a 76-year-old woman from Hood River, OR, both of whom died of natural causes. The brains are currently whole, but Fortin expects that they will be dissected for study at some point in the future.