STORY OF THE BRAIN IN 10½ CELLS

Fans of Oliver Sacks will welcome this Wellcome Collection publication in which we discover the ethereal world of the brain in a rather elegant little book. Find out how we all think and feel. There are more than 100 billion brain cells in our heads, and every single one represents a fragment of thought and feeling. Each possesses a mysterious beauty, with branching, intricate patterns like shattered glass, and colours like rainbows and sparkling tendrils. Richard Wingate has been scrutinising them for decades and is still gripped by the myriad of forms when he looks down the microscope. With his lyricism and clarity he shows how each type of cell possesses its own personality and history, illustrating a milestone of scientific discovery. He illuminates the stories of pioneering scientists like Santiago Ramón y Cajal, and Francis Crick. What is it in the quality of information that each cell carries that makes it grow this way? What is the meaning of this beautiful, elegant form? Chapters include Purkinje's Cell and the Method of Silhouettes, The Retinal Ganglion Cell, The Astrocyte and Neural Glue, Freud's Throwback, The Leech Neurone and the Nerve Net, Betz's Brain Cell and the Mapping of the Cortex, Consciousness, the Motoneuron, The Giant Axon, The Storytelling Brain and more. Awesome in every sense. 214pp.