Networks Across Scales

The metaphor of the brain as a loom originates with Charles Sherrington, who famously wrote, “Swiftly the brain becomes an enchanted loom, where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern—always a meaningful pattern, though never an abiding one.” His evocative words capture the fleeting yet purposeful nature of brain activity. The image of a loom suggests a mechanistic underpinning to what often feels like a magical process. Notably, the Jacquard loom—an early precursor to modern computing with its punch card system that heralded the binary logic foundational to today’s computers. The inverted head in the poster alludes to the 1937 depiction by Penfield and Brody of the homunculus, represented upside down to reflect the brain’s somatotopic map.

Poster design by Prof. Sudhakar Nadkarni