“UB has a Brain Museum.”
That was the crux of an email that I received over the weekend. Along with the short sentence, the sender also included a link to the Brain Museum’s website (see here). Upon clicking on the link I soon found myself delving into a world comprised of the most unlikely of collections – human brains. It turns out that the Brain Museum (aka the Museum of Neuroanatomy), located on University at Buffalo’s South Campus, was founded in 1994 by Harold Brody, MD ’61, PhD, and is the only museum of its kind in the country.
Interestingly enough, The Brain Museum recently made it into Urban Ghost’s “20 Reasons to visit Buffalo“.
Altogether there are 80 brains on illuminated display, which can be viewed by the public upon arranging a guided tour. Once on the tour, gawkers and brain enthusiasts will learn about the various exhibited cerebral organs and their reasons for being included in the museum. From pathological examples that include Alzheimer’s disease, cerebral aneurysms and hydrocephalus to others that zero in on anatomical features (corpus callosum, hippocampus and cerebellum for example), there is a seemingly never-ending array of cerebral curios to observe.
You don’t necessarily need to be brainy to visit this one-of-a-kind museum. Quite the opposite actually. The museum was created for people of all ages who are interested in learning about breaking historical achievements, diseases, and formations, as they relate to the brain. The museum also attracts plenty of curiosity seekers, most of whom have never seen such a wide array of real life specimens. Visuals include a number of dissections, informative displays, and categorized brain tissue slides (mainly utilized by medical researchers and students).
Now is your chance to see these organs up close, and to learn about the secrets, the abilities and the defects that make the brains so fascinating, so mysterious… so human.
To arrange for a guided tour, email Professor Christopher Cohan, PhD, who is currently the curator of the museum – ccohan@buffalo.edu.
The Brain Museum (Museum of Neuroanatomy)
360 Biomedical Education Building
University at Buffalo, South Campus
3435 Main Street
Buffalo, N.Y. 14214