Brain freeze! Thanks to many generous donors, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Brain Resource Center has a large tissue repository for Johns Hopkins University faculty and academics across the country. With permission from the donor and their family, the brain is collected after death, prepared for storage and embedded in paraffin wax slides like the ones in this photo. Researchers need human brain tissue to test treatments and cures they found in animal studies for brain diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. Neuroscientst Ted Dawson’s lab Johns Hopkins Medicine uses these tissues to study the development of Parkinson’s disease.

Caption written by Lauren Hines, Science Writing Intern for the Johns Hopkins Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences.

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