Distribution of magnetic remanence carriers in the human brain

That the human brain contains magnetite is well established; however, its spatial distribution in the brain has remained unknown. We present room temperature, remanent magnetization measurements on 822 specimens from seven dissected whole human brains in order to systematically map concentrations of magnetic remanence carriers. Median saturation remanent magnetizations from the cerebellum were approximately twice as high as those from the cerebral cortex in all seven cases (statistically significantly distinct, p = 0.016). Brain stems were over two times higher in magnetization on average than the cerebral cortex. The ventral (lowermost) horizontal layer of the cerebral cortex was consistently more magnetic than the average cerebral cortex in each of the seven studied cases. Although exceptions existed, the reproducible magnetization patterns lead us to conclude that magnetite is preferentially partitioned in the human brain, specifically in the cerebellum and brain stem.