The aesthetics of neuroscience—and the neuroscience of aesthetics

Samuel Johnson, the colourful 18th-century English lexicographer, asserted that ‘No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money’ (Boswell, 1934). Since unlikely to be applicable to the two books discussed here, Dr Johnson’s quip leads one to seek alternative motives and ask what led the authors to write these books, and why and for whom each book was written. Dealing first with what inspired the authors, in the preface to his Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century, Dr Schoonover records how an informal group of American writers and scientists met to discuss ‘novel ways of communicating science to nonscientists’. The group, now called NeuWrite, addressed the ‘infamous methods section’, the section described as ‘somewhat of a downer’ which appears in almost every scientific paper. The aim was to combine pictures that illustrate the methodology inherent in producing neuroscientific data with an explanation of the scientific technique or principles behind each picture. But Schoonover aims for more: ‘For if the images are extraordinarily beautiful, I would argue that the principles underlying the techniques that created them are in some instances even more exquisite’, and Schoonover wants the reader to appreciate the beauty of the methodology as much as the images. The methods discussed range from techniques of microscopy to neurophysiology, and are arranged in chapters comprising 15–20 images, each chapter being prefaced by a short essay by an acknowledged expert in the field. The background to each picture is written by Schoonover and comprises not simply a caption but a succinct and interesting commentary. The chapter headings convey the scope: ‘Early history: from Galen to Golgi’; ‘The birth of modern neuroscience: Santiago Ramón y Cajal’; ‘After Cajal: from black and white to color’; ‘Breaking the diffraction barrier: from cells to molecules’; ‘Electricity in the brain’; ‘The brain as circuit’; and ‘From brain structure to brain function’. The book concludes with end-notes, bibliography and picture credits, which provide detailed sources of reference for each image and its background. Thus the methods under discussion span the entire known history of neuroscience, although when it comes to antiquity, the concept of ‘methods’ must be viewed in the loosest of terms. Pictures of Fludd’s ‘Mind and universe’ and Descartes’ ‘Pineal gland’ are hardly relevant to ‘methods’ as we would use the term today, an issue avoided in the similarly extensive approach already adopted in the scholarly, seminal work by Clarke and Dewhurst entitled An Illustrated History of Brain Function, now in its second edition with Michael Aminoff an additional contributor. By contrast, the preface to Dr Butter’s book, Crossing Cultural Borders: Universals in Art and their Biological Roots, reveals his motivation as largely personal. Citing professional and personal reasons, Butter describes what inspired him to write his book, one reason—the same as Schoonover’s—being his interest in ‘forging of new links between art and science’, and the increasing potential for such links resulting from neuroscientific advances such as developments in brain imaging. But this book has a specific and unusual focus; its premise is that artistic features are universal—since they are ubiquitous in different cultures, places PORTRAITS OF THE MIND: VISUALIZING THE BRAIN FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE 21ST CENTURY By Carl Schoonover 2010. New York: Abrams Price: £22.50/$35.00 ISBN: 978-0-8109-9033-3