Einstein’s Brain “Markedly different” from norm
The article that I
have read is about how Albert Einstein’s gray matter in his brain has
differences then the average persons. They are not sure though if it has any
links between his great intelligence though. Dr. Dahlia W. Zaidel of UCLA was
the researcher on this project.
She started out by investigating to see if
the brain of a genius might show special features. She then examined two slides
made from Einstein’s brain after his death in 1955. The slides contained samples
of his hippocampus. She then compared Einstein’s brain with tissue from ten
individuals of ordinary intelligence from the ages of 22 to 84 qt their time of
death.
Einstein’s neurons on the left side of the brain were consistently
larger then those on the right side. Dr. Zaidel noted that these marking were
much different from those seen in the other brain of people with normal
intelligence.
She noted, that the neurons in the left hippocampus imply that
Einstein’s brain may have had stronger nerve cell connections between the
hippocampus and the neocortex than his right. She noted that “The neocortex is
where detailed, logical, analytical and innovated thinking takes place.”
With the difference in the size of the neurons are unknown, whether they
occurred at birth during development or as an abnormality. She said also that
she didn’t know if this asymmetry is related to his genius or not.
At the
end it said that normal brain tissue is usually available for study but there is
no brain bank for geniuses. She does hope in the future to obtain tissue from
very bright scientists, which would make it possible to place Einstein’s brain
of genius.
I thought this research article was very interesting. That would
be really interesting if they could find out how and why Einstein was so smart.
It would be really neat to see.