“…the most complex and detailed artistic depiction of the brain in the world, featuring an 8’ X 12’ gilded reflective microetching of a sagittal slide of the human brain.”

Rendering of a reconstruction of all mitral cells in the larval zebrafish olfactory bulb, with cells coloured according to the glomerulus they innervate. (Image courtesy of Adrian Wanner/ Friedrich Miescher/ Institute for Biomedical Research/ Nature Neuroscience )

The vertical occipital fasciculus, a major neural pathway rediscovered after disappearing from the scientific literature for a century.

3D reconstruction of nerve cell connections in the mouse retina. From Kim, et al. (2014) . The crowdsourced wiring diagram may have revealed a time-delay neural network that makes certain cells sensitive to motion in specific directions.

Computer-generated reconstruction of three pyramidal neurons, showing differences in the distribution of myelin (shown in white) along their axons. Daniel Berger/ Giulio Tomassy/ Harvard University.

“Like the entomologist in search of colourful butterflies, my attention has chased in the gardens of the grey matter cells with delicate and elegant shapes, the mysterious butterflies of the soul whose beating of wings may one day reveal to us the secrets of the mind” - Cajal.

Pyramidal neurons and their dendrites visualised with patch clamp fluorescence microscopy. Alexandre William Moreau/ Institute of Neurology/ Nikon Small World Competition.