Neurocomic
Even if Farinella’s artwork is pretty crude, the fact that he and coauthor Roš are bona fide PhD-holding neuroscientists assures that they know what they’re talking about. Inspired by Alice in Wonderland, they depict the adventures of a young man who, by means of a pretty girl reading a book, falls into what seems to be a forest but is actually the brain. There he meets a couple of Nobel laureate scientists who explain brain morphology to him before sending him into a neuron, where more top researchers elucidate brain pharmacology. After inadvertently overindulging there, he plunges into a cell and, thereby, brain electrophysiology. Further episodes acquaint him with plasticity and synchronicity in the brain before he is reunited in an epilogue with the pretty girl. The information relayed is sufficiently genuine for the book to be a neophyte’s primer on brain science, and the manner of its presentation is certainly exciting enough to sustain interest. Though Farinella’s drawing chops leave something to be desired, this handy introduction to neuroscience is a handsome artifact. --Ray Olson