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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