of the brain into visual pieces that provide
thought-provoking attempts at answers—or dig
deeper and ask more questions.
“This is a phenomenal time for discoveries of
the brain,” says Patricia Maurides, an artist and
adjunct professor at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Art. “I believe many artists are
naturally drawn to this work, because it offers
us insight in who where are, what is ‘the self ’,
how do we perceive, how does memory happen, [and] what happens in an atypical brain.”
Just last fall, Maurides curated an exhibit called
“Neurons and Other Memories” in collaboration with CMU’s Center for the Neural Basis of
Cognition, showcasing works by more
than a dozen artists
who had incorporated
some type of neural
and brain imagery as
part of their artwork.
ing artist as a child, Ramón y Cajal applied a
technique that used silver nitrate to stain neurons, creating clear images of neurons against
a yellow background. He drew hundreds of
reproductions of various nerve cells and other
features of the nervous system.
Even outside of a scientific context, Ramón
y Cajal’s drawings are an exquisite example of
talent and aesthetic skill. They have been a
powerful influence to those artists who engage
with neural imagery. Rebecca Kamen, an artist
and professor emeritus from Northern Virginia
Community College, recalls how she felt struck
the first time she saw Ramón y Cajal’s draw-
For Maurides, the
work she and other
artists do involving
neural imagery ultimately explores ‘what
it is to be human’.
The visualization of
neural circuitry in art
is generally thought to
have started with Santiago Ramón y Cajal,
a Spanish pathologist and neuroscientist from
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He made
several contributions to the field of neuroanatomy, winning the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine for his research into the structure
of the nervous system. Most notably, Ramón y
Cajal’s experiments provided definitive evidence
for the ‘neuron doctrine’: the concept that the
nervous system is made of discrete individual
nerve cells that operate as part of a contiguous
system—not as a single, linked network.
Like every great life scientist who came of
age before the advent of photography, Ramón y
Cajal was skilled at sketching his observations,
creating detailed drawings of the neural structures he saw under the microscope. An aspir-
6
Images courtesy of artist Noah Hutton.
ings—specifically his signature drawing of the
retina. “I could feel something literally shifting
from looking at them,” she says.
But as the 20th century progressed, scientists quickly jettisoned hand-drawn sketches
for more accurate imaging techniques, and
photography became king. Art, however, is not
restricted by the goal of scientific accuracy,
and any artist looking to visualize neurons and
related physiology was free to move through
whatever medium they fancied.
We might see one of Ramón y Cajal’s heirs in
Greg Dunn, a neuroscientist and artist whose
paintings of neuronal structures are adorned in
a cerebral beauty and emotional grip that recalls
SciArt in America April 2015