The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Central South University signed on Friday an agreement for collaboration on the establishment of the world's first China Brain Bank.

At the agreement signing ceremony, Head of the Department of Psychiatry of HKU Faculty of Medicine Tang Siu Wa said that understanding the brain is important to all disciplines, such as humanity, national security, politics, business and medicine. Brain is the most complex organ of the body, most importantly, no other organ but the brain, represents the person, he added.

As introduced by Tang, the China Brain Bank is a collection of brains with records of different characters and personalities, normal and abnormal thoughts and psychology systems and markets of life experience so that it really cuts across humanity and medicine, cuts across disciplines.

Tang said there are many brain banks around the world but no collection from these banks have got a systematic and prospective design to recognize the fact that behind every brain.

Tang said collections from the brain banks in Western countries are not accompanied by detailed medical history or psychological profile of the patient, or a research based prospective psychometric or psychiatric profiling of the donors all of which are important information to the interpretation of data.

Furthermore, the Western based brain banks do not have an adequate supply of brain tissues originated from Chinese subjects. As a result, while brain research is progressing fast in the West, there is a serious deficiency of data in Chinese brains, said Tang.

According to the information provided by the Faculty of Medicine of the HKU, the brain bank will be located at the Xiangya Medical School of the Central South University and the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong. Donors will be recruited after informed consent for organ donation and will receive psychological and psychiatric evaluations. Donated brains will be collected and stored according to established protocol.
 
(Xinhua News Agency February 21, 2004)