Cover of Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from
Antiquity to the 21st Century, by Carl Schoonover. Published by
Abrams Take a brain out of its skull, cut a thin slice, examine
it under a microscope and you will see nothing but grey, barely
differentiated matter. You might be astonished then, as late
nineteenth anatomists were, to discover that when treated in the
right manner the blank slate contains a universe teaming with
small parts, thousands upon thousands of lines wrapping around
each other in terrifyingly convoluted patterns. Out of that
serene gray the central challenge of neuroscience arises: the
organ in our heads is of such monumental complexity that our
feeble minds alone cannot make sense of the whole. The history
of neuroscience, then, is the history of the techniques
researchers have employed to delve into the brain. The entire
edifice of knowledge, our very ability to pose questions about
the nervous system and its relationship to the mind, depend on
the tools and methods contrived