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Taking data from "essentially dozens if not hundreds" of scientific sources to create this intricate image of the brain, a neuroscientist and his team combined hand drawings, optical engineering, gilding (the process of etching into gold), and other artistic and technical processes to create this depiction of about 500,000 neurons hard at work.
It's "a reminder that the most incredible machine in the universe" is inside each of us, the team wrote. This image won the Experts' Choice in the Illustrations category of the 2017 Vizzies. The most exciting areas of science often can't be seen with the naked eye because the phenomena are too big or too small, too slow or too fast. That's why we believe it's worth honoring those who use novel techniques -- or create exceptional examples of traditional ones -- to present scientific ideas visually. So, for the third year, Popular Science has teamed up with the National Science Foundation to bring you exemplars of information made beautiful. Congratulations to the winners of the 15th Anniversary of the Vizzies Challenge!Image credit: Greg Dunn, Brian Edwards, Will Drinker
