Psychiatric brain banking: three perspectives on current trends and future directions

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry
• Biobanking

Background:

• Postmortem human brain tissue is essential for neurobiological research in psychiatric disorders.
• Identifying brain-specific transcripts and isoforms requires high-quality tissue samples.

Purpose of the Study:

• To discuss state-of-the-art methods and recommendations for maintaining psychiatric brain banks.
• To highlight best practices from three major brain collections.

Main Methods:

• Review of methods used by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Brain Tissue Collection, Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine Alzheimer's Disease and Schizophrenia Brain Bank.
• Analysis of different approaches to tissue acquisition, clinical characterization, and data accessibility.

Main Results:

• The NIMH collection focuses on medical examiner donations, clinical diagnosis, and toxicology.
• The Harvard collection emphasizes large-volume, high-quality tissue from community donors with worldwide data accessibility.
• The Mount Sinai bank utilizes prospective recruitment, antemortem contact, stereological sampling, and frozen tissue approaches for multiple assessments.

Conclusions:

• Consensus exists on the importance of networking, rigorous tissue and clinical characterization, sample and data accessibility, and adaptability for successful psychiatric brain banking.
• These elements are integral to advancing neurobiological studies of psychiatric illness.