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Embroidering the brain

By bioephemera on April 5, 2010.

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The new blog Kingdom of the Blind documents an ongoing collaboration between embroiderer/artist Melody Lord and neuroscientist Adam Hamlin. The title is from Jim Endersby's book A Guinea Pig's History of Biology: "Science is the kingdom of the blind: there are no sighted - or even one-eyed - people, because we have no way of looking directly at reality to assess what it is like."

On the blog, Adam Hamlin occasionally posts about his work with the cholinergic cells impacted by Alzheimer's disease, while Melody shares her inspirations from the lab, and the challenges of finding the right materials to portray fluorescent neurons:

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I particulary liked her perception of the similarity between cholinergic neurons and this variegated, nubbly yarn - it's a similarity I wouldn't have noticed:

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I'm looking forward to seeing more from this ongoing project - especially the completed embrodieries of the cholinergic neurons! Visit Kingdom of the Blind for more.

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biology
blogosphere
Medical Illustration and History
Science

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