Cajal's Neuronal Forest Science and Art

This book shows hundreds of figures produced throughout the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century by Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) and his contemporaries. Cajal was captivated by the beautiful shapes of the cells of the nervous system. He and his fellow scientists saw neurons as trees and glial cells as bushes. Given their high density and arrangement, neurons and glial resembled a thick forest, a seemingly impenetrable terrain of interacting cells mediating cognition and behavior. In unraveling the mysteries of the brain, these researchers encountered an almost infinite number of cellular forms with an extraordinary beauty, which they could not help but put pen to paper, allowing them to discover a new artistic world- the neuronal forest- that gave free rein not only to their imagination, but to a new way of viewing the brain as well. The first part of the book focuses on the scientific atmosphere in Cajal's times, on the history of the neuron, and the anatomical challenge posed in studying neuronal connections. It also delves into the artistic skills of Cajal and other pioneers in neuroscience and how the neuronal forests have served as an unlimited source of artistic inspiration. The second part consists of 275 original drawings by Cajal. --Publisher's description.