The C. U. Ariëns Kappers brain collection

The C. U. Ariëns Kappers brain collection, at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam, is one of the largest and oldest of the world's catalogued repositories of specimens that reveal the course of brain evolution and the resulting panoply of neural biodiversity. Established a century ago, it has served since then as the basis of the encyclopedic texts authored by its founder, as well as research publications into the current time. It consists of 726 specimens: these include 309 mammals, 134 birds, 81 reptiles, 21 amphibians, and 179 “pisces”—a grouping of bony fish, sharks, and cyclostomes. We present here accounts of the history and contents of this treasure trove of research materials.