Brain tissues originating from 101 control Caucasian individuals were collected by the Medical Research Council (MRC) Sudden Death Brain and Tissue Bank (Edinburgh, UK; Millar et al. 2007). The bodies were stored refrigerated and were brought up to the PM suite just prior to the start of the autopsy. Each post-mortem brain dissection was carried out in the same way. The whole brain was removed within 15 min of the body as fresh tissue. The brain was immediately cut into coronal slices and the various anatomical regions of interest were immediately sampled. Furthermore, the samples once removed from the coronal slices were placed in sealed containers which in turn were placed on cool blocks (chilled to −20C) and stored within an insulated box. The samples were dissected into various size pieces approximately 250–500 mg and were placed in tubes which were immediately snap frozen in liquid nitrogen. The post-mortem interval (PMI) was calculated from the time of death to the time of removal of the brain from the skull. The total number of samples processed from this source was 1842
