Albert Einstein's brain was 15% wider than average

[krsna]

 

 

Albert Einstein's work laid the groundwork for many modern technologies including nuclear weapons and cosmic science.

After his death, Einstein's brain was removed and preserved for scientific research by Canadian scientists.

 

It was found that the part of Einstein's brain responsible for mathematical thought and the ability to think in terms of space and movement was 15% wider than average.

 

It also lacked a groove which normally runs through this region suggesting that the neurons were able to communicate.

 

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Einstein's brain was dissected and studied by fellow scientists, who now say it really was different.

Even though he has been dead since 1955, Albert Einstein still has something to teach us. This time it is a lesson in neuroscience, and perhaps one in raising children as well. After carefully studying the gray matter that produced a series of scientific breakthroughs, including the brain-wrenching theory of relativity, Canadian researchers have concluded Einstein's brain really was different. Specifically, they found that the part of his brain that was involved in mathematical reasoning was 15 percent wider than normal, and not divided by a fold that is found in most of the rest of us.

Einstein's brain is a prized specimen for reasons that go beyond his superior intellect. For starters, his brain was in excellent shape when he stopped using it. Fate intervened by providing a sudden death, a ruptured aneurysm of the abdominal aorta. And, he'd had the foresight to make prior arrangements to leave his brain to research. So, within 7 hours of his death it was already being removed from his skull. To prevent deterioration it was injected with, and then suspended in, Formalin. Later, it was measured, photographed and cut into about 240 blocks, each about the size of a sugar cube. The blocks were embedded in celloidin and some were cut into sections for microscopic examination.

 

What Einstein allowed others to do with his brain while he was still using it makes the specimens he left behind more useful still. Appreciative that there was something special about the way his brain worked, Einstein went out of his way to help fellow scientists unravel the mystery by consenting to an electroencephalograph examination that recorded his brain wave activity. He also consented to interviews in which he explained how he solved problems. His explanation was quite extraordinary. "Words do not seem to play any role," he once said. "[There are] more or less clear images." This observation would provide the critical clue to Sandra F. Witelson, the leader of the McMaster University team that appears to have unlocked the secret of Einstein's brain.

 

Brain Atlas

 

As far back as the ancient Greeks, physicians suspected different functions were associated with different parts of the brain. Specifically, they noticed that blows to the back of the skull could cause blindness. This was more scientifically confirmed during World War I by German military surgeons who operated on soldiers with head wounds. Today, there exists a detailed "atlas" that locates the parts of the brain that control different types of activity.

 

Because different functions reside in different locations Einstein's remarks about visualization were significant to Witelson. At the level at which Einstein explored nature, physics problems are mathematical problems. Looking at the part of Einstein's brain that was involved in mathematical reasoning and comparing it to the same region of more ordinary brains just might provide the long-sought key to his genius.

 

Witelson knows a good deal about normal brains: She collects them. You know that old movie where Igor walks past a shelf with jars marked "good brains" and "bad brains"? It isn't so far from the truth. Witelson delved into her collection and retrieved the brains of contributors who were both mentally and physically healthy, with IQs from 107 to 125. No dunces here, but no rocket scientists either.

 

A first-blush comparison showed the brain of the towering genius to be remarkably ordinary. "The gross anatomy of Einstein's brain was within normal limits," says Witelson, "with the exception of his parietal lobes. [Visual and spacial] cognition, mathematical ideation and imagery of movement are mediated predominantly by right and left posterior parietal regions." If you have ever slapped yourself on the side of the head after saying something stupid, you hit the right spot. In Einstein these regions were 15 percent wider, and were missing a folded structure found in the rest of us.

 

This finding was not entirely surprising. Researchers had seen similar enlargements before. "Both the mathematician Gauss and the physicist Siljestrom [had] extensive development of the inferior parietal regions," says Witelson.

 

Use It Or Lose It

 

Her team's examination doesn't answer the deeper question of whether the development of specific parts of the brain can be linked to intelligence. Nor does it explain how this region came to be enlarged. The next step for researchers will be to examine volunteer mathematicians, who will solve problems while undergoing positron emission tomography (PET). Used mostly in research laboratories, PET scanners produce images that show which parts of the brain go to work when the subject performs different tasks. The technique has been used to identify the parts of the brain that become involved when we see, speak or think. If the posterior parietal region is more highly developed in people with mathematical talent, then the display of a PET scanner examining this region should light up like a Christmas tree.

 

If this happens, scientists will have an even bigger problem to ponder: Are some people born with brains that are naturally tuned for mathematical reasoning? Or, is this physical difference the product of experience? The idea that what a child sees, hears and feels influences the development of his or her brain is not as strange as it may first seem. There is a growing body of evidence that childhood experiences exert a strong influence on brain development. Infants with congenital cataracts, for example, will go blind unless the problem is immediately corrected. The brain cells involved in decoding vision will, in a matter of speaking, simply fade away. The brains of children also appear to be "hard-wired" to learn how to understand multiple languages, provided they are taught when they are very young. By the time they reach high school French class, the neural linkages that permit rapid language learning are long gone. This being the case, the key to genius may be found in childhood, and the experiences and stimulation to which children are exposed.

 

If the current line of scientific reasoning plays out as many suspect it will, the last lesson that Einstein has to teach may be that brain development obeys the same natural law as every other part of our body. In other words, parents, if you don't make your kids use it, they are going to lose it. And it probably wouldn't hurt for them to watch less TV.