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"Using a combination of ultrafast chemical fixation and cryogenic storage, it is the first demonstration that near­ perfect, long-term structural preservation of an intact mammalian brain is achievable," the Brain Preservation Foundation wrote in a news release. The team, led by recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate Robert McIntyre, filled the vascular system of the rabbit brain with chemicals that prevent decay and allow it to be cooled to -211 degrees Fahrenheit. When thawed, the brain was found to have all of its synapses, cell membranes, and intracellular structures intact. "Every neuron and synapse looks beautifully preserved across the entire...

Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Human Brains from Medical Museum A 23-year-old Indiana man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to breaking into a medical museum and stealing preserved human brains and other tissue that he then sold online, authorities said. David Charles, of Indianapolis, pleaded guilty to six charges including receiving stolen property, and burglary in a Marion County court where Magistrate Amy Barbar sentenced him to one year of home detention and two years of probation, county prosecutor spokesman Anthony Deer said. Charles on multiple occasions broke into the Indiana Medical History Museum to steal jars of brains and other...

Vice President Biden addressed Ukrainian legislators Tuesday in a committee room of the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, where he began his remarks by thanking the legislators for "making me feel relevant again." Biden is in Ukraine to show support for the Ukrainian government as that country faces continued pressure and threats from Russia. Biden's "relevant" comments were a reference to his time as a legislator in the United States: I want to thank my colleagues for bringing me back home. For 36 years I sat in our legislature, and I used to actually have this seat in our -- I...

Speaking at the White House National Conference on Mental Health on Monday, Vice President Joe Biden told a sometimes serious and sometimes jocular story about the two brain surgeries he needed in 1988 to deal with cranial aneurysms. Biden told the White House audience “they take a saw and they cut your head off” and “they literally had to take the top of my head off.” He also recounted that as he was being wheeled into surgery he asked the neurosurgeon, “What are my chances of getting off this table completely normal?” The surgeon told Biden he had a better...

A Staten Island couple is suing New York City after the shocking discovery that their dead son's brain was on display in a jar at a city morgue. Jesse Shipley was 17 when he died in a car crash in 2005. Andre and Korisha Shipley said they had no idea his brain was removed during an autopsy until some of the teen's classmates at Port Richmond High School visited a morgue on a field trip. While on the tour, the kids, who were members of a forensic science club, came across a jar with a brain floating inside and their...

Peru museum has diseases on the brain Wed Mar 8, 1:04 PM ET LIMA (AFP) - Thousands of human brains float in jars of formaldehyde at a unique museum that gives visitors to Lima an up-close view of brain diseases, from trichinosis to stroke. More than 2,500 brains are on display in a modest museum in Lima sponsored by the National Institute of Neurological Sciences (INCN). Visitors can see brains of persons felled by AIDS, Alzheimers, clots, hemorrhages, heart attacks and a myriad of tumors. The museum is the proud owner of a brain that died of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease, the...

NAPPANEE, Ind. -- The high cost of gasoline may have driven them to do it. Picking the wrong fuel pump cut short their getaway. Two men who tried to steal gasoline from a construction company instead filled the tank of their car with off-road-grade diesel fuel Sunday, police said. An employee of Beer & Slabaugh spotted the men on the company property near Nappanee, about 20 miles southeast of South Bend, as they were siphoning fuel out of the car's tank, Elkhart County deputies said. The two told the employee that a friend had put the wrong fuel into the...