The UK Parkinson’s Disease Society Tissue Bank is asking people to donate their brains after they die, to aide the fight against Parkinson’s disease.
The service, located in London’s Imperial College, gets only one donation from someone with a healthy brain compared with 25 donations from people with Parkinson’s disease.
Postmortem brains of healthy people are essential so researchers can compare diseased tissue with unaffected tissue and draw valid and accurate conclusions about the condition.
Parkinson’s disease is known to occur when dopamine neurons die in the brain’s nigrostriatal pathway. It is not clear exactly why this happens, however.
Research that compares the postmortem brains of affected and unaffected people is, therefore, an essential part of understanding why this occurs, hopefully leading to the development of new treatments.
So, if you want to help in this essential research, you can will your brain to the Parkinson’s Disease Society Tissue Bank.
Link to UK Parkinson’s Disease Society Tissue Bank (Thanks Dr Petra!).
Mind Hacks 