Brain plasticity and mental processes: Cajal again

The year 2006 marks the 100th anniversary of the first Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for studies in the field of the Neurosciences jointly awarded to Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramon y Cajal for their key contributions to the study of the nervous system. This award represented the beginning of the modern era of neuroscience. Using the Golgi method, Cajal made fundamental, but often unappreciated, contributions to the study of the relationship between brain plasticity and mental processes. Here, I focus on some of these early experiments and how they continue to influence studies of brain plasticity.