Students in Michael Anderson’s Psychology 201: Mind and Brain course were given a first-hand look at their subject of study on Monday.
Anderson, an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience in the psychology department, brought a human brain to class.
“This is an exceptionally rare opportunity,” Anderson said. “The vast majority of people on the planet Earth never get to have this experience.”
Anderson said he has been bringing the brain, which is kept in Huestis Hall, to class for about four years.
At the end of class, students had the opportunity to don gloves to protect against the skin-irritating preservative the brain is bathed in and handle the brain.
The preservative made the brain feel harder to the touch than brains are in their natural state, Anderson said.
“When I picked it up, it felt like an eraser,” sophomore Japanese major Nici Grigg said.
Junior human physiology major Craig Jordan said seeing the subcortical regions on the underside of the brain was the most interesting part for him.
“They were a totally different texture than I’d seen before,” Jordan said.
Anderson didn’t know anything about the brain donor’s life or the circumstances of the donor’s death, although he said because brain size is proportional to body size, the donor was probably a large person.
“This was somebody who was thinking about lunch, thinking about what they were going to do next week,” Anderson told his 325 students. “This was a person just like all of you.”
– Eva Sylwester