At least, by the time they come our way. The folds are especially blue, and much of the surface is also gray or brown. There’s a surprisingly wide range of sizes, and one can easily get a sense that certain brains are diseased by their shape and color.
The brains are donated by participants in the Framingham Heart Study, which started in 1948. Participants in the study are interviewed and examined thoroughly every two years, so each brain (actually, we only get one hemisphere) comes from someone whose lifestyle and medical history are known in unusual detail.
Hopefully, I will be able to produce high resolution maps of these brains, and we will be to connect features of those maps to each donor’s medical history.