The Brain Research Laboratory at the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital and Case Western Reserve University

Abstract

✓ In 1961 Dr. Robert White, fresh from the Mayo Clinic, established the Brain Research Laboratory (BRL) at the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio, under the auspices of Case Western Reserve University. During a span of 15 years, he and his colleagues contributed significantly to our knowledge and understanding of the central nervous system in deep hypothermic conditions, thus demonstrating the protective effects of cerebral and spinal cord cooling in patients with injuries as well as the ability of the brain to survive extended periods of total circulatory arrest at extremely low temperatures. It was there that isolated brain preparation and transplantation were first accomplished. These and other unique, surgically constructed brain models opened new fields of exploration in neurochemical, neurophysiological, rheological, immunological, and cognitive features of the brain in normothermic and various hypothermic states. During the laboratory's most productive years (1961–1976), there were 10 surgeons actively involved in scientific investigations who later became chairmen or chiefs of Departments or Divisions of Neurosurgery and another four who became professors of neurosurgery or other surgical specialties.