The Brain Observatory and the Imaginary Media of Memory Research

Abstract

In 2009, the brain of the most famous amnesiac of the twentieth century was sliced into 2,401 sections. The cutting procedure was streamed live over the internet, where over 400,000 people tuned in to watch a frozen block of cerebral matter turn into thousands of fine sheets of brain tissue. This was the brain of Henry Molaison, a man who could not retain any new memories ever since a part of his brain had been removed in 1953, in an operation meant to relieve him of his severe epileptic seizures. With his memory loss, Henry gained the status of the most important research subject for the study of human memory, a crucial subject for discoveries into procedural, declarative, short-term and longterm memory. Watching the white brain-block come apart, thousands of people were offered a new episode in the infamous case history of ‘H. M.’, a protagonist in every textbook of psychology or neurology. Today, after a life of examination, Henry’s 2,401 brain sections have been fixed, stained, photographed and now constitute the first brain inside the public digital platform of the Brain Observatory at the University of California, San Diego. Each ten-terabyte-sized photographed section allows visitors to zoom in from the life-size level to the cellular dimension. Thus, the live dissection in 2009 staged the passage of H. M.’s brain from a fleshy organ in a jar to a collection of images stored in a public digital database, navigable with Google Maps technology, accessible both to neuroscientists and non-experts.