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iPad App Offers Detailed Images of Einstein's Brain
puddingebola writes in with news of a new app that might be of interest to those studying Einstein's brain, or just looking for something neat for Halloween. "Albert Einstein's brain, that revolutionized physics, can now be downloaded as an iPad app for USD 9.99.
The exclusive application, which has been just launched, promises to make detailed images of Einstein's brain more accessible to scientists than ever before.
The funding to scan and digitize nearly 350 fragile and priceless slides made from slices of Einstein's brain after his death in 1955 were given to a medical museum under development in Chicago, website 'Independent.ie' reported.
The application will allow researchers and novices to peer into the eccentric Nobel winner's brain as if they were looking through a microscope.
'I can't wait to find out what they'll discover,' Steve Landers, a consultant for the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago, who designed the app, was quoted as saying by 'Press Association.'"
So this is an advert for a $9.99 iPad app?
I don't get it.
It's pretty disgusting that you can monetize images of someone's brain. I wonder how Einstein would feel about that.
...then I wouldn't rely on it too much.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Not even in the secular sector can people avoid their bizarre attraction to the macabre relics of mythically aggrandized heros.
The application will allow researchers and novices to peer into the eccentric Nobel winner's brain as if they were looking through a microscope.
This summary's stated premise is so incredibly fucking retarded. Why not just post the slides online or release high-res formats, rather than charge a $9.99 premium for an application that displays images on a sub par interface for image manipulation and analysis? (rhetorical question) Aside from the press release FUD, can any researcher honestly tell me that the ability to view historical slides on an ipad is in anyway superior to the thousands of other mechanisms of viewing pictures of things?
There is no way in hell any tablet is going to provide a superior interface in terms of technology employed for viewing data of this sort for in-depth analysis.
As with much of the tablet market these days...gimmick after gimmick after gimmick. This.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Because the slices of his brain were made soon after his death in 1955.
They can't because they already cut it up into little pieces.
I wonder how true that is. Not that this is his brain nor that he revolutionized physics. I just wonder if THIS is the brain that did it.
You see, London has a strenuous test for Taxi drivers. Their streets are not like New York, where many are numbered in sequential order and relatively easy to learn. London has 25,000 roads, with no real rhyme or reason, and perspective taxi drivers - to get licensed - needs to memorize them and takes several years. The test is called the Knowlege, iirc, and it takes an average of a dozen attempt to pass:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/12/08/acquiring-the-knowledge-changes-the-brains-of-london-cab-drivers/
The hippocampus of these drivers is substantially larger and stay so throughout their working life. But it shrinks back down after retirement:
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/75th-anniversary/WTVM052023.htm
This is Einsteins brain after, what, 40 some years after his best achievement? Is it the same brain anymore? Wouldn't it be like poking at the Schwarzenegger's remains whenever he dies to see what makes a bodybuilder at his peak? Just something to ponder.
Nothing. It's some pictures of a cut up brain. Although LG/Samsung did a pretty good job in making that Retina screen, I don't think there will be enough resolution in the scans to show the synaptic connections between Einsteins neurons.
because PET and MRI didn't exist in 1955?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
" Einstein's brain was preserved after his death in 1955, but this fact was not revealed until 1986. Albert Einstein's brain has often been a subject of research and speculation. It was removed within seven and a half hours of his death. The brain has attracted attention because of Einstein's reputation for being one of the foremost geniuses of the 20th century, and apparent regularities or irregularities in the brain have been used to support various ideas about correlations in neuroanatomy with general or mathematical intelligence. Scientific studies have suggested that regions involved in speech and language are smaller, while regions involved with numerical and spatial processing are larger. Other studies have suggested an increased number of Glial cells in Einstein's brain. [1]"
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein's_brain
Has anyone tried to recover DNA from the preserved brain tissue? According to this article it was preserved in celloidin.
Wow, on /. only 48 hours after is was everywhere else.. maybe /. isn't over the hill yet. /sigh
This American Life
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/167/memo-to-the-people-of-the-future?act=3
What happened to Einstein's brain after he died.
--
BMO
Idolatry is a manifestation of laziness. We believe that Einstein had some special brain, as an excuse for not exercising ours. A person has extraordinary achievements. The easiest thing for others, is to proclaim him/her a ``genius'' and take it easy.
So the images are out of copyright then? Who would pay for it?
We have PET scan, we have MRI, we have the technology to do virtual 3D slicing.
Exactly! I just can't wait for the article titled "Neural correlates of perspective taking in the post-mortem Einstein's brain"
(this is to say: what the hell is one expected to find in a brain dead for more than half a century?!)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
And why does it cost actual money?
it's an app so that you can pay for it on impulse - and it costs money so that they can gouge money.
what? torrenting them for all mankind for free? but that wouldn't have paid for the consultant bill!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The slices were made in 1955. The scans were made recently.
mov ax, 4c00h
int 21h
(this is to say: what the hell is one expected to find in a brain dead for more than half a century?!)
Something different to other "non-genius" brains that have been dead and preserved for a similar length of time. Such expectations may or may not turn out to be laughable but the original aim was not about expectations, it was all about data preservation.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
what? torrenting them for all mankind for free? but that wouldn't have paid for the consultant bill!
If you have ever been a smoker you will know that complete strangers will approach you on the street and basically ask for a free cigarette, an equal number will offer to buy one. Sometimes I will share, particularly if I find the approach amusing or genuine, sometimes I won't simply because I'm not in the mood to be either bought or generous. The best recent approach I had was a young African guy in a nice suit coming from the direction of a big employment agency, he formally introduce himself and shook my hand before offering to purchase a smoke.
I never take money even from those who insist, but the thing I hate most is people who when politely told, "sorry mate but no", go on to demand I give them a free smoke just because they gave one to someone else in the past. To people with those sort of expectations I repeat my answer, and strongly suggest what they are looking for is a job or a tobacconists, as the case may be.
If you really are genuine about creating and sharing your own stuff, nobody is stopping you. What I object to is the (minority) attitude here at slashdot that because you are generous to others in the same "user space", those who are in that "user space" must return that generosity on demand. That attitude is neither generous nor sharing since you have an up front expectation that others should repay you in kind. I'm no fan of religions but the one thing all of them got right was "the golden rule", a proper application by ALL those involved in the "IP user space" and the MAFIAA would be stone cold dead the very next business day.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
They had none of these when the images were made.
Edit: When the slices were made, I mean.
Isn't this a little like doing a CAT scan on a smartphone to figure out why the icons look so cute?
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I also find the idea that there was something unique about Einstein's brain that made him a genius. IMHO what set him apart wasn't his academic brilliance, which was nothing special going by his school performance, it was his ability to think up daft questions like "if I were riding a light beam and shone a torch in front of me, how fast would the light from the torch travel?".
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Information being published for a specific platform only is a deplorable development. In the PC era this would have been published as PDF and everyone could read it. These days, the desire to monetize information prompts publishers to package information as an application, excluding everyone who doesn't have the targeted platform.
This was bad enough when people repackaged a website as an app: one could just access the website instead. But books shouldn't be platform-specific.
PET requires a radiotracer that is impossible to load into dead fixed tissue (by fixed I mean that it has been bathed into a fixative solution for long-term preservation). MRI is possible in dead tissue but does not offer the resolution that can be achieved by more classical optical methods, you won't see individual cells or anything smaller than that. The best you can do is probably to distinguish between macroscopic structures although I am not a specialist of this technique. Slices are the best solution if you want to see individual cells and their processes. Slices are also quite popular as they allow to use immunohistochemistry to label cells, structures or proteins of interest with fluorescent tagged molecules allowing all kinds of fluorescent imaging investigations of the tissue. I doubt this has been done with his brain though.
There wasn't really much point in replying to the parent post. The guy clearly doesn't understand PET or MR, or imaging in general for that matter. Nice summary. In conclusion, optical methods offer better resolution and specificity than tomographic methods. Also, Einstein rules.
Wouldn't it have been more useful to have scans of his brain when he was alive and thinking? I mean, Hannibal Lecter might have a use for this but who else?
Unfortunately we still haven't figured out how to build time machines, in order to get the modern scanners back in time to when Einstein lived. And then, how to scan his brain back then without altering the past.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.