Postmortem examination of patient H.M.’s brain based on histological sectioning and digital 3D reconstruction

  • Jacopo Annese,
  • Natalie M. Schenker-Ahmed,
  • Hauke Bartsch,
  • Paul Maechler,
  • Colleen Sheh,
  • Natasha Thomas,
  • Junya Kayano,
  • Alexander Ghatan,
  • Noah Bresler,
  • Matthew P. Frosch,
  • Ruth Klaming
  • & Suzanne Corkin

Affiliations

– The Brain Observatory, San Diego, California 92101, USA

Jacopo Annese, Natalie M. Schenker-Ahmed, Hauke Bartsch, Paul Maechler, Colleen Sheh, Natasha Thomas, Junya Kayano, Alexander Ghatan, Noah Bresler & Ruth Klaming

– Department of Radiology, University of California San Diego, San Diego, California 92093, USA

Jacopo Annese, Natalie M. Schenker-Ahmed, Hauke Bartsch, Paul Maechler, Colleen Sheh & Ruth Klaming

– C.S. Kubik Laboratory for Neuropathology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts 02114, USA

Matthew P. Frosch

– Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts 02139, USA

Suzanne Corkin

Abstract

Modern scientific knowledge of how memory functions are organized in the human brain originated from the case of Henry G. Molaison (H.M.), an epileptic patient whose amnesia ensued unexpectedly following a bilateral surgical ablation of medial temporal lobe structures, including the hippocampus. The neuroanatomical extent of the 1953 operation could not be assessed definitively during H.M.’s life. Here we describe the results of a procedure designed to reconstruct a microscopic anatomical model of the whole brain and conduct detailed 3D measurements in the medial temporal lobe region. This approach, combined with cellular-level imaging of stained histological slices, demonstrates a significant amount of residual hippocampal tissue with distinctive cytoarchitecture. Our study also reveals diffuse pathology in the deep white matter and a small, circumscribed lesion in the left orbitofrontal cortex. The findings constitute new evidence that may help elucidate the consequences of H.M.’s operation in the context of the brain’s overall pathology.

…Regularly spaced tissue sections through the brain were selected at an interval of 1.26 mm; these were mounted on large-format glass slides (5 × 7 in) and stained using thionin….

Reprinted from Nature Communications

Catalog #5070 Large Slides