What it’s Like to Hold a Human Brain

As a Neuroscience Graduate Student, I Thought I Knew What To Expect. I Was Surprised

I’m sharing reflections on a personal experience today with subscribers, because a friend who subscribes recently asked for something more personal essay-ish. If you enjoy it, maybe I’ll continue sharing such stories.

“Examining the tissue that once supported all this activity was like looking at the infrastructure of a city’s public transit system with all the people gone…imagine you can hold that entire subway system in your hand, like a giant examining a city, or a child playing with its toys.”

1.

The first thing that surprised me about seeing a human brain up close was how small it looked. Of course, as a neuroscience graduate student, I knew it weighed about 3 pounds in life, give or take a few ounces. But it looked, and felt, lighter.

How strange that something as valuable as a life was not literally weighty in my hand.

I was confronted as starkly as possible with the contrast between the inert piece of meat before me and the actions it once performed: thinking, feeling, piloting a body through space, and giving expression to a unique personality – perhaps even a soul. 

I wondered about the person who had kindly donated their brain to science, where it ended up in this anatomy lab class for neuroscience graduate students. Who had that person been? Why did they donate their brain? What, if anything, did they imagine would happen to it? Did they care?

Someday, someone will look at my brain in a similar way. Will they ask the same questions? Or will they, eager to escape the vertigo-inducing mysteries of the human condition, worry about exams instead?

2.

The second thing that surprised me about the human brain is how much touching it made it feel real. 

That taught me the importance of presence, touch, and physical objects, before COVID literally brought home how much it hurts to isolate ourselves from the physical world. After all, we are physical beings, and our brains are much like the ones on the lab table.

The outer surface of the cortex was soft and smooth. It was also a little moist – not surprising, given its time sitting in preserving fluid. It felt slightly rubbery, but had more give beneath my fingertips than my brain-shaped rubber stress ball. 

The cerebellum really did feel corrugated, as you might expect from textbook pictures – wrinkled and rough, yet still flesh. It felt the way I imagine elephant skin might.

Screenshot of 3 photos of the human cerebellum, from Tel Aviv University’s excellent anatomy tutorial.

Gray matter had some heft and substance to it, but was soft enough that I wanted to be gentle with it. 

My reverent fear of damaging something so delicate struggled against my scientific curiosity and child-like desire to open and poke and prod, to feel every surface and hold every organ to sense its shape and size. 

Respect, of course, won out. I touched each brain I encountered gently – just enough pressure to hold it and feel it without dropping it. 

Mostly, I hung back and looked reverently, trying to memorize what I saw and compare it to the drawings in my textbooks.