Thursday, December 29, 2011

700 Layers Of Human Brain in 47 Seconds --- Amazing


Perhaps not for everyone however this is a facinating video. It's hard to imagine how the allure of anatomy served thinly sliced could ever cease to be enchanting somehow for myself. The clip, while brief, comprises 700 images of a cryosectioned human brain. Each snapshot corresponds to a single, horizontal brain slice, beginning at the top of the skull and moving downward in the direction of the neck, each slice progressing a mere .174-millimeters at a time. Taken individually, no one slice is particularly striking; but upon seeing the folds of brain matter contort, vanish, and materialize in such rapid succession, the compulsion to share it became too strong to resist.
For those of you who might like to see these sections as stills:
BrainMaps.org: http://brainmaps.org/index.php?action=viewslides&datid=81
It also reminded me of the project at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, DC. There are currently efforts to repeat this project with higher resolution images but only with parts of the body instead of an entire cadaver.

Visible Human Project:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Human_Project

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