Imagining the brain cell: the neuron in visual culture.

Images of the exquisitely formed apparatus of the nervous system have great potential to capture the imagination. However, the fascinating complexity and diversity of neuronal form has only rarely been celebrated in broader visual culture. We discuss how scientific and cultural practices at the time of the neuron's discovery generated a legacy of schematic and simplified popular neuronal imagery, which is only now being revised in the light of technological advances and a changing artistic climate.