brain

Thanks to a rare bacteria that grows only on rocks in the Swiss Alps, researchers at The Univ. of Texas at Austin and the Pasteur Institute have been the first to identify how alcohol might affect key brain proteins.

ONCE you know what it is, this apparently innocuous picture of a blob assumes a terrible gravity. It is an adult human brain that is entirely smooth – free of the ridges and folds so characteristic of our species' most complex organ.
We can only imagine what life was like for this person. He or she was a resident of what is now North Texas State Hospital, a mental health facility, and died there in 1970, but that's all we know. While the jar containing the brain is labelled with a reference number, the microfilm containing the patient's medical records has been lost.