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Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 17:257–259, 2008
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0964-704X print / 1744-5213 online
DOI: 10.1080/09647040802131710
NJHN0964-704X174 5213Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, Vol. 17, No. 3, May 2008: pp. 1–6Introduction: Visual Images and Visualization
in the Neurosciences
IntroductionAmy Ione AMY IONE
The Diatrope Institute, Berkeley, CA, USA
In the history of the neurosciences, physical images and cognitive visualization offer two
frames of reference for thinking about the historical development of the field. The images
of neurological illustration, for example, constitute a sourcebook on early medical
theories. We can also identify a body of images that articulate how cultural beliefs
influenced conclusions about behavior and learning as they relate to anatomy, physiology,
biochemistry, and our nervous system. More recently, the enthusiasm generated by brain
imaging technologies has highlighted the role of visual images in our efforts to capture the
form and function of the brain. In light of the many precursors that show our urge to know
the brain has long had a visual component, it seems that the time is ripe to reexamine the
historical role of visual images and visualization techniques in enhancing our understand-
ing of the brain and human behavior. The eight articles that comprise this compendium
offer a small step in this direction.
To open the volume, a paper on “Visual Thinking and Neuroscience” by C. U. M.
Smith analyzes why visual thinking is at the core of neurobiological thought and has
always played a major role in reporting and progressing science. In a general sense,
images and diagrams encapsulate thinking and communication about vast amounts of
work and information. We can point to histograms, charts, graphs, micrographs, brain
scans, flow charts, freehand drawings, cartoons, etc. Some of these images are diagram-
matic (e.g., graphs, histograms, pie charts, etc.) and are used as an aid in comprehending
complex numerical data. Others are used as shorthand and allow us to comprehend in one
“gestalt” vast quantities of anatomical and functional detail. Smith fleshes out his thesis
with three examples of particular interest to the history of the neurosciences: the column,
the retina, and the impulse.
Nicholas J. Wade’s contribution, “Vision and Visualization,” highlights the role of
visual communication in the history of vision science. Wade conveys that scientists
frequently express their ideas graphically through a number of images he presents in
support of his thesis. Diagrams of anatomical structures, like the eye and visual pathways,
and figures displaying specific visual phenomena have assisted in the communication
of visual ideas for centuries. He also shows that, as with any science, vision can be
subdivided. The classification adopted by Wade is in terms of optics, anatomy, and visual
phenomena. Optics can be considered in terms of the nature of light and its transmission
through the eye. Understanding of the gross anatomy of the eye and visual pathways was
initially dependent upon the skills of the anatomist whereas microanatomy relied, largely,
on the instruments that could resolve cellular detail, mediated by the observational skills
Address correspondence to Amy Ione, Director, The Diatrope Institute, 2342 Shattuck Ave
#527, Berkeley, CA 94704. E-mail: ione@diatrope.com

258 Amy Ione
of the microscopist. The balance between research skills and the added value technologies
bring to research is a component of his essay that bears on the close relationship between
art and science; a subject touched upon in many of these articles.
The next paper, “Brain, Mind, and Body: Interactions with Art in Renaissance Italy” by
Sheryl R. Ginn and Lorenzo Lorusso, also speaks of the art and science interface. Their
research pinpoints areas where the cross-fertilization of art and science was mutually
beneficial and provided new ways of explaining the mysteries of the human body and mind.
This article balances the work of key figures (Vesalius, Leonardo, Estienne, Eustachius, etc.)
with technologies that aided in disseminating their scientific investigations and research,
(e.g., printmaking and wax modeling). As they show, key advances in neuroanatomical
methods at that time shed light on the value of human dissection to Renaissance scientific
and artistic practice. In addition, their summary of pre-Renaissance theories adds immensely
to our understanding of why the first systematic anatomical and physiological studies of the
brain and human body during the Renaissance are characterized as revolutionary.
Lorenzo Lorusso’s “Neurological Caricatures since the Fifteenth Century” further
establishes the art/science connection. He shows that caricatures and cartoons have a long
history of use in art, science, and neurology. Drawings and prints were used to illustrate
and to educate both professionals and lay persons about medicine (and about the perils of
medicine and neurology as well). In the caricature form, graphics were historically
disseminated as artwork and to a public eager to learn how neurology would benefit the
meaning of bodily expression. Among the artists who sought to portray the emotional or
the physical qualities of humans and/or caricatural aspects of medical activities were
Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Brueghel, William
Hogarth, Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray, the Cruikshanks, Francisco Goya, and
Honore Daumier. Some used caricature for emphasis, while others present humorous and/
or polemical attacks. Also discussed are physicians such as Charles Bell and Jean-Martin
Charcot, talented caricaturists who offered a quite different “image” of neurology from
that presented by the artists. Lorusso’s thorough examination brings to light that
caricatures were popular portraits of developments in science and medicine and were
frequently used whenever scientific language was too difficult to disseminate, in particular
in the field of neurology.
Images continued to play an integral role in eighteenth and nineteenth century
advancements. Marco Piccolino’s paper, “Visual images in Luigi Galvani’s Path to
Animal Electricity,” reviews the scientific endeavor that led Luigi Galvani to his hypothe-
sis of “animal electricity”, i.e., of an electricity present in a condition of disequilibrium
between the interior and the exterior of excitable animal fibers. Through outlining the role
played by visual images in Galvani’s path of discovery, Piccolino’s paper helps us better
conceptualize how Galvani’s research earned him the designation of one of the founding
fathers of neuroscience.
Sarah de Rijcke’s paper, “Light Tries the Expert Eye: The Introduction of Photography
in Nineteenth Century Macroscopic Neuroanatomy,” speaks to the world of nineteenth-
century images. She argues that new technologies were not always favored. While
photography’s scientific inauguration in the nineteenth century meaningfully coincided
with a shift towards the ideal of mechanical objectivity, we can find exceptions to this in
neurology. Indeed, after the publication of the first neuroanatomical atlas to contain
photographs, Jules Bernard Luys’s Iconographie Photographique des Centres Nerveux
(1873), the use of photography in macroscopic neuroanatomy remained rare. Her article
sketches this largely overlooked terrain of investigation and expands on why macroscopical
neuroanatomy photography failed to offer a satisfactory alternative to drawing or