Often heralded as leaders in the field, the Allen Brain institute performs pioneering research on all manner of brain tissue. Working with brain tissue can often be as frustrating as it is rewarding. Slicing brain tissue presents many challenges. The tissue is a combination of soft and fibrous regions. For over a decade, researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science have been using the Compresstome® vibrating microtome to help give them better brain slices with increased longevity and reduced damage to surface neurons. This enables neuroscientists to have healthy neurons for patch-clamp electrophysiology experiments.