Smart Art

Photomicrograph of a mouse hippocampus, an area of the brain critical for learning and memory

Brains: at first blush, these squishy gray blobs don’t exactly scream “art” or “beauty.” But luckily for us, neuroscientist Carl Schoonover’s new book Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century doesn’t stop at first blush.
In fact, most of Schoonover’s images involve subsequently injecting first blush with loads of radioactive dye before photographing it magnified several thousand times, thus producing some of the most beautiful and fascinating images I have ever seen.
Admittedly much of what makes these images incredible can be chalked up to the awe-inspiring experience of seeing the physical seat of human consciousness up close and personal, but even divorced from their subject the pictures are truly incredible. Some, like the image below, possess the minimalistic serenity of marble sculpture.

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

Others (again, below), with bold splashes of color breaking out of the black like paint strokes, remind me of the previously blogged about Overpainted Photographs done by Gerhard Richter.

Photomicrograph of the molecular scaffolding of axons.

And many (as seen below yet again) exhibit a complex layering of color as intricate and energetic as any Jackson Pollock.

This photomicrograph shows a few of the many neurons that are found in the neocortex

So the next time you hear the phrase “brains before beauty,” ask yourself: what’s the difference?
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