It seems to me that more and more of our members are showing an interest in assisting our scientists in their work by arranging for post mortem brain donation of the loved ones in our care.

Will you help me determine if this is true by participating in this POLL [above]?

DrP

I am interested in going forward with the autopsy but have not yet made arrangements.

Doris

Doris, making the decision to move forward is crossing one big hurdle... now it will be one step at a time. Good luck as you work and move forward.

DrP

I regret not arranging it beforehand. I had a brief window of opportunity but it fell on a Friday night and no one was available at the brain donation center in Boston that evening. I left a page which was answered but it was too late to do anything. I really wish I could have had the donation done before the cremation, it would have been nice to know if it really was LBD or not.

I contacted the Harvard University Brain Bank here:
http://www.brainbank.mclean.org/

I don't know if it's elsewhere but I also found BU accepts donations.
Boston University - here's the link I followed:
http://www.bu.edu/alzresearch/research/ ... brain.html

Bridget (jnbyoung),

I'm sorry I didn't know that you wanted to donate your grandfather's brain. There is someone in SC who will do the tissue procurement for free. I don't know if this would've been geographically feasible in your case.

Harvard's brain bank (McLean) CANNOT be called at the last minute for brain donation. I tried for someone here, calling on a Thursday afternoon, when death was imminent. Understandably, it takes them several regular business days to find someone to do the tissue procurement. The advantage of McLean is that the tissue procurement is free to families. The disadvantage is that it takes 6-12 MONTHS to get the neuropathology report.

I also recently called, for someone here, the UCLA brain bank. Sadly, they are no longer accepting brains from DLB patients.

Robin