![]() ![]() These cells support the “thinking” neurons in the left parietal lobe, an area above and behind the left ear involved in spatial relations and mathematics. In 1985, neuroscientist Marian Diamond of the University of California, Berkeley, reported the Einstein brain had extra cells called glia. Nevertheless, they believe they’re on to something. ![]() Those who would explore Einstein’s brain are well aware they’re treading potentially controversial ground. The epithet dogs even some functional MRI studies, which seek to link specific thought processes to corresponding regions of the brain by measuring moment-to-moment differences in blood flow. Some researchers suggest this or that region of the brain corresponds to a mental faculty others say it amounts to little more than phrenology, a 19th-century pseudoscience that claimed bumps on the skull could explain personality. Nineteenth-century scientists fell into bitter debate as to whether intelligence lay in anatomy or whether a vital force - or even an immortal soul - was responsible for thoughts.Ī philosophical divide persists to this day. The brains of Vladimir Lenin, Walt Whitman and mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss were among the many removed for study. The hope that studying a postmortem brain will reveal secrets about its owner’s mind is centuries old. ![]() Every deviation from the purported norm became a potential explanation for Einstein’s genius: his uncanny thought experiments, his kinesthetic imagination, his mathematical and musical abilities.īut some experts think it’s all been a fool’s errand - that the haphazard state of the specimen, wishful thinking by its explorers and our murky understanding of the mind-brain link render these conclusions questionable. Ever since, researchers have pored over chunks, slides and photos of Einstein’s brain, counting cells, measuring dimensions, describing shapes and comparing it with the brains of ordinary people. ![]()
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