"Hippocampal neurons"

 

"Hippocampal neurons," by Robert Clark, University of California, San Diego. As one of the most prominent structures in the brain, the hippocampus plays an important role in acquiring memory for certain everyday facts--semantic memory--and in holding onto autobiographical memories--episodic memory. It also looks a lot like a seahorse. (Hippocampus means "horse sea-monster" in Greek.) Neuroscientist Robert Clark played up the resemblance in this image. Clark digitally added images of real hippocampal neurons to a pair of gold seahorses. The seahorses are oriented as they would be in the human brain. The image won expert's choice (first place) in the posters & graphics category of the 2015 Visualization Challenge, now called The Vizzies, a long-running, annual competition co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Popular Science. [The competition was formerly named the International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge (SciVis) and was previously co-sponsored with AAAS' journal Science.] The competition aims to recognize some of the most beautiful visualizations from the worlds of science and engineering and awards prizes in five categories: photography, video, illustration, posters & graphics and interactives. To learn more about the competition and view all the winning entries past and present, see the NSF Special Report:  The VIZZIES: Visualization Challenge.   source: nsf.com