International Brain Banking We still know very little about the
human brain. With an estimated 100 billion neurons (nerve cells)
in the human brain, scientists grapple to understand what these
neurons do, how they interact with one another and how they make
us who we are. It is therefore not surprising that we are still
some way from fully understanding the human brain, and more
significantly the autistic brain and why its development is
altered. There are many scientific approaches that can be used
to visually inspect the human brain, such as magnetic resonance
imaging (MRI), but only one way of directly studying the human
brain – and that is by looking at post-mortem brain tissue. For
this very reason, brain tissue is a critical element in the
process of neurological scientific discovery. Unfortunately,
tissue donation remains rare, hindering the very research that
will help us to understand autism. The Autism Tissue Program
(ATP), a Scientific Program of Autism Speaks, is dedicated to
supporting scientists