The brain is an endlessly fascinating topic for those who have one. And being a visual species, we humans are especially attracted to images of this intriguing organ. The combination of beauty and scientific value in both modern and antique brain imagery is hard to rival.
As a science journalist, I have had countless opportunities to view, study and appreciate pictures of the brain, but often they still astound me. And the collection of images in the new book Portraits of the Mind is truly impressive. Many of the them have never been seen by the public before.
Bringing together the range of imaging techniques that produce these pictures gives the reader a new appreciation of both the incredible amount of knowledge we've accumulated about the brain, and the enormous — often still mysterious — complexity of it.
Written by Carl Schoonover, a doctoral student in neurobiology at Columbia University who majored in philosophy as an undergrad, the book contains both scientific details about the brain and broader thinking about the mind, as it traces our understanding of these topics from the eleventh century to today. The mix of history, science and art is terrific.
One of our own science bloggers, Jonah Lehrer, wrote the forward to the book and had this to say about the appeal of the images:
It is not an accident. There is a grand tradition of scientists making art out of human anatomy, from the comic grotesqueries of Vesalius to the exquisite drawings of Cajal. The twenty-first century is no exception. Just because these images depend on expensive machines doesn't mean the scientist has become a passive observer, or no longer thinks about the aesthetics. Keats knew that truth exists in a tangled relationship with beauty, and nothing illustrates that poetic concept better than these scientific images. Their empirical power is entwined with their visual majesty.
See for yourself with some of my favorite images from the book on the following pages.
Human Skull Inscribed by a Phrenologist
According to the now-discredited theory of phrenology, bumps on the skull betray the volume of the brain areas beneath each one, granting insight into a subject’s cognitive or moral strengths and weaknesses.
Image: Anonymous, 19th century. Photograph by Eszter Blahak/Semmelweis Museum.
Photos and captions courtesy of Abrams.
Canine Olfactory Bulb
Drawing of a dog’s olfactory bulb by Italian physician and scientist Camillo Golgi. The features that appear here were revealed by the revolutionary method for staining nervous tissue that bears his name.
Image: Camillo Golgi, 1875. Courtesy Dr. Paolo Mazzarello, University of Pavia, Department of Experimental Medicine, Section of General Pathology.
A subset of neurons found in the mouse’s retina is fluorescently labeled using a genetically encoded protein. These neurons report only the motion of objects traveling in an upward direction, a feature that is predicted by the anatomy of their dendrites.
Image: In-Jung Kim and Joshua R. Sanes, 2008.
Serotonin in the Cerebral Cortex
Photomicrograph revealing the location of a transporter of serotonin (a widespread neurotransmitter) in areas of the cerebral cortex that process sensory information such as touch and hearing.
Image: Lasani Wijetunge and Peter Kind, 2008.
Photomicrograph of a neuron’s cell body and the dendrites radiating out of it, obtained with a scanning electron microscope.
Image: Thomas Deerinck and Mark Ellisman, 2009.
Photomicrograph of a mouse hippocampus, an area of the brain critical for learning and memory.
Image: Tamily Weissman, Jeff Lichtman and Joshua Sanes, 2005.
The neural circuitry in the eye transforms light into signals that the brain can understand. This image of a chick’s retina reveals the neurons that perform this function with its photoreceptor cells (at the top, in gray). These are the familiar rods and cones that capture photons of light and translate them into electrical currents.
Image: Andy Fischer, 2008.
Frontal Cortex Connectivity Map
Connectivity diagram of the frontal cortex, an area thought to be responsible for higher mental functions such as planning, deciding between good and bad courses of action, and suppressing instinctual or habitual behaviors. A central hub in the brain, it is connected with a wide range of neural systems including those involved in sensation, emotional memory and motor planning.
Image: Bruno B. Averbeck and Moonsang Seo, 2008. (Reprinted under Creative Commons Attribution License from Averbeck, B.B., and M. Seo, PLoS Comput Biol 4, No. 4 (4 Apr 2008): e1000050: page 185.)
Human Cerebral Cortex
Photomicrograph of the microscopic blood vessels that carry nutrients to neurons in the brain, obtained with a scanning electron microscope. This sample, from human cerebral cortex, shows a large blood vessel at the surface of the brain (top), which sends down thin, densely branched capillaries to deliver blood throughout the entire cortex.
Image: Alfonso Rodríguez-Baeza and Marisa Ortega-Sánchez, 2009.
Wired.com and publisher Abrams are teaming up to give away one free copy of Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century, retail $35.
To enter the contest, share your thoughts on these images in the comments below. One randomly selected winner will be notified by e-mail. Deadline is 12:01 a.m. Pacific time, Nov. 17, 2010. Contest open to U.S. residents only.
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