Monday, May 02, 2011

Scientific illustration


Here is a link to an illustration I did for a scientific article. It shows the spines on neurons of zebra finches as the father is teaching the juvenile the song. Scientists are able to view the spines and how they change while the birds learns songs. They can do this by creating viruses that are engineered so they will attach to the spines and become florescent. The images that they have are remarkable but difficult to understand. The images themselves look like green blobs. A scientist had to explain with diagrams what I was seeing and show me the changes over time. After I gained some insight into what I was seeing I was able to create the image.