Box Full of Full of Brains

I had heard about Paul Aravich, but this was the first time I had heard him speak.  He is a professor at a medical school, and he lectures on dementia and brain health. His reputation precedes him, because he travels with a plastic box full of human brains.  Normal brains, the brain of a person who had dementia, half of the brain of a person who died from a massive stroke (in the very core of her brain) and the brain of a person who died from a traumatic brain injury clearly showing the bleeding into the brain tissue.  When he puts on the rubber gloves, and reaches into that box, everyone in the room looks up from their phone, or pulls their phone out to take pictures.  Forget the PowerPoints, this man knows the power of a visual aid in speaking.  

Over the past 20 years understanding of dementia has vastly expanded, but there are still so many mysteries.  

He also had a spinal cord.  I had never seen one. I was fascinated by the branches that come out of the sides, at each vertebra.  On the right side, at T-9, that branch no longer connects to anything on my spine.  I knew there was no longer a connection at that point, I had never seen what that connection might look like. 

He had a table outside of the ballroom, with gloves, he would hand you a brain.  I declined, I am slightly weirded out by the idea.  

Would you hold the brain?