To kick off our new season of The Beautiful Brain Podcast, host Noah Hutton sits down with Carl Schoonover, author of “Portraits of the Mind,” a stunning collection of beautiful images of the brain published by Abrams in 2010, with essays by senior scientists, detailed descriptions of the images by Schoonover, and an eloquent foreword by Jonah Lehrer.

Schoonover’s path to writing Portraits is a somewhat unorthodox one. He first studied Philosophy as an undergraduate at Harvard, then went on to do his graduate work in cognitive science and neuroscience, which he is still pursuing as a 4th year Ph.D candidate at Columbia University in New York City.

In this interview, Carl Schoonover discusses his background, the impetus for creating the book, and why the history of neuroscience is really the history of seeing the brain. Total runtime: 35:17.

Listen to episode // right-click to download as mp3 (25 MB)

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IMAGES FROM PORTRAITS OF THE MIND:

>Click images to enlarge.

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More on Portraits of the Mind:

• Our review of the book.
• The New York Times’ article about the book.
• Huffington Post’s short article and gallery.