The brain gathers, extracts, and stores salient details about our environment to plan and carry out behaviors that are appropriate (if all goes well) to a given situation. But for a systems-level understanding of how the brain works, researchers look to the overall topology of network connections among neurons for answers. Fine-grained descriptions of anatomical features of the eye and ear, for example, have yielded critical insights into the neural basis of image and sound perception. When American architect Louis Sullivan proffered the enduring mantra of 20th century design-form follows function-he chided his peers for violating in art a law so clearly visible in the “open apple blossom” and “sweeping eagle in his flight.” The notion that the essence of things takes shape in the matter of things, first articulated in Aristotle's philosophy, has long guided biologists' attempts to understand the inner workings of the most complex organ known-the human brain.
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