Cajals Neuronal Forest DeFelipe Javier Prof Instituto Cajal

Cajal's Neuronal Forest: Science and Art continues the tradition set forth by its sister volume Cajal's Butterflies of the Soul (OUP, 2009). Cajal was captivated by the beautifulshapes of the cells of the nervous system. This new collection contains hundreds of beautiful rarely-seen-before figures produced throughout the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century by famed father-of-modern-neuroscience Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852-1934) and his contemporaries.

Given their high density and arrangement, neurons and glial resembled a thick forest, a seemingly impenetrable terrain of interacting cells mediating cognition and behavior. He and his fellow scientists saw neurons as trees and glial cells as bushes. In unraveling the mysteries of thebrain, 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.