Rudolph the Red-Nosed Hippocampal Blood Vessel

If you were wondering if Christmas icons were being randomly formed by blood vessels in your brain, wonder no more. Because it’s entirely possible. In fact, there’s a picture of it. A group of scientists stumbled upon this seeming image of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer while they were studying neurons in the hippocampal region of the brain, which plays a role in long-term memory and spatial navigation.

Researcher Claudia Racca explains:

“We were looking at a section of the tissue and noticed this strange but familiar shape. “It was intriguing and we noticed the similarity to a reindeer.

“We then took an overexposed picture of it and the red blob for the nose and the white antlers showed up even better.

“We got distracted from the science at that point and had a bit of fun with the pictures of Rudolph instead.

Racca puts it best: “It may not be very valuable scientifically but it looks nice on the eye.”

(Mirror via Geekologie)