A further note on staining: pioneer neurobiologist Ramon y Cajal got a lot of mileage out of a staining technique which, for reasons he didn’t understand, only stained a small fraction of neurons. Bingo: instead of getting a dense thicket, you get some beautiful branching structures to draw. If his technique had picked out individual astrocytes instead, perhaps glial cells would have gotten more attention.
A further note on staining: pioneer neurobiologist Ramon y Cajal got a lot of mileage out of a staining technique which, for reasons he didn’t understand, only stained a small fraction of neurons. Bingo: instead of getting a dense thicket, you get some beautiful branching structures to draw. If his technique had picked out individual astrocytes instead, perhaps glial cells would have gotten more attention.