[This is a repost of a diary I put up last night at an absurdly late hour on the west coast. I was pretty excited at the time and wanted to get some eyeballs on it, but the magnitude of the topic leads me to think I should toss this up when more people are around. If it's a faux pas, my apologies.]
It's that of Patient H.M., and it is quite literally the most famous brain in modern medicine. I invite you to watch it's cutting.
The page to watch it is at http://thebrainobservatory.ucsd.edu/...
HM had intractable epilepsy that was successfully localized to the MTL's on the left and right sides of his brain. To cure the epilepsy those portions of his brain were removed. The epilepsy was completely cured, but he lost memory. And the ability to form new memories. But only certain kinds. He could still learn new motor skills, and his working memory (short term memory) was baseline normal. Dead even with control groups. He lost some memory of before the surgery, but not all of it.
In short, his brain allowed us to see what structures in the brain handle what kinds of memory, and nailed down a long suspected belief that working, or short term, memory was handled differently and separately from long term memory. His wikipedia page (linked in the intro) has a mammoth chronicling of what we learned about memory from H.M.'s brain.
The brains being sliced into histological sections at UCSD, so that it can be more completely studied in more labs, now that it's owner is dead.
If anyone wants to say good bye to a truly remarkable, if accidental, experiment and to pay their respects to H.M., or even just pour one out for a fallen homie, watch the procedure over the day. The brains already frozen, nothing too icky.