The Challenge: Create a stunning editorial image showcasing the gradient of interneuron populations across the cortex. Changes in the Proportion of Inhibitory Interneuron Types from Sensory to Executive Areas of the Primate Neocortex: Implications for the Origins of Working Memory Representations. Santiago Torres-Gomez ST et al. 2020.

The outcome: This cover design is featured on the cover of the Cerebral Cortex, Volume 30, Issue 8, August 2020.

How it’s done: The macaque brain was modelled in 3D and the inter neuron populations were plotted on the surface of the brain. The realistic brain shows the sensory encoding, and the cartoon brain represents the mental representations. The traces show the gradient in the waveform profile for the different interneurons, and the neurons were reconstructed from archetypal parvalbumin and calretinin interneurons. The brain was rendered in Blender, and the reflection crafted in Photoshop.