I find it really cool that EyeWire is doing with modern technology something similar to some of the work that Ramon y Cajal did over 100 years ago: examining many sections of the retina, mapping the shape of retinal neurons and how they connect with each other, all with the goal of deriving from those observations an understanding of the functional relations between structures observed, and their collective function as a system. Ramon y Cajal is one of my scientific hero-figures (the other being Alan Turing), so being involved in a project that parallels his work feels really incredible.
For anyone not familiar with Cajal, go look him up - it’s well worth the time.
Here’s a neat paper on his contributions to neuroscience: