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Scientists Appeal To Consider Brain Donation

By Joie M Gahum | Update Date: Feb 18, 2017 10:04 AM EST

Scientists expressed the need for more people to donate their brains for research after die. At present, there is a lack of brains from people with disorders such as depressions and post-traumatic stress disorder.

To be able to develop new treatments for mental and neurological diseases and disorders, scientists are appealing to the public to donate their brains for research purposes after they die, BBC reports. The human brain, being the complex organ it experiences changes in wirings and develops as humans for. It is a representation of the behavior that a human possess and who a person is.

Studies conducted on the human brain are being conducted to be able to understand the link between the shape of the brain to several mental and neurological disorders. At present, there are more than 3,000 brains stored at the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at the McLean Hospital located just outside Boston. This center is considered as one of the largest brain banks in the world. Specimens in the centers are mostly from people with neurological and mental issues.

Scientists are looking forward to finding new treatments for Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's and a lot of other psychiatric disorders. However, brain banks across the world, even the one from McLean Hospital do not have enough specimens to support their research.

Even with the tools and the capabilities to conduct a deep-level biology on the human brain, there is a current lack of the donated brains that they receive, which they can use for their research.

Meanwhile, Yahoo News reports about the increasing rate of overdose deaths in Canada lead to an increase in the number of organs available for transplant. Canada is currently fueled with a deadly spike in fentanyl abuse. This analgesic is found to be 100 times stronger than morphine. Data shows that there are already 59 organs from 20 donors used in transplants from January 2017 to mid-February. Around 25% of the organs that have been transplanted in Canada for 2016 came from people who die of a fentanyl overdose.

Although these untimely deaths are unfortunate for the family of the disease, it is also being treated a "mixed blessing". Many people on the waiting list for an organ transplant are getting the help that they need. 

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