Newly Released Einstein Brain Photos Hint At the Anatomy of Genius

scibri writes "Photographs of Einstein's brain taken shortly after his death, but never before analysed in detail, have now revealed that it had several unusual features, providing tantalizing clues about the neural basis of his extraordinary mental abilities. The most striking observation was 'the complexity and pattern of convolutions on certain parts of Einstein's cerebral cortex,' especially in the prefrontal cortex, and also parietal lobes and visual cortex. The prefrontal cortex is important for the kind of abstract thinking that Einstein would have needed for his famous thought experiments on the nature of space and time, such as imagining riding alongside a beam of light. The unusually complex pattern of convolutions there probably gave the region a larger-than-normal surface area, which may have contributed to his remarkable abilities."

Comments

Re:Stop deifying this guy

[martijn hoekstra]

Seriously. He was just a scientist among many others.

It is entirely possible that special relativity would have been formulated by someone else - with the problems with EM speed of light and reference frames, it could be said to have been in the air, so to say. That also goes for the photo-electric effect. General relativity was something else though, it was new, it was brilliant, and it completely shifted the way we think about the universe. He might not have been as great as Newton, but he's up there with the Very Select Few.

Re:No control group

[Trepidity]

Yeah, some kind of quantification is definitely missing. How unusual? How unusual among people of the same profession? How common are major physics discoveries among people who don't share such features (i.e., is it a necessary feature?). Attempting to draw conclusions about complex cognitive functions from small-n measurements of a handful of macroscopic features feels a little bit like phrenology.

or maybe genius moulds anatomy

[johnrpenner]

we are quick to attribute a causal relationship: a certain anatomy causes genius; but this is, strictly speaking, an interpretation. we can not dismiss out of hand that a sense of genius works into a given environment, and moulds and forms the brain from habits that result from genius, rather than genius resulting from habits — the brain the enscribed result of the history of your thinking — the history of your perception of thoughts and mental effort (or lack thereof).

2cents from sunny and cold toronto island
jp

Re: Stop deifying this guy

[Black Parrot]

Might also explain his obstanance regarding the cosmological constant which he didn't abandon until observing red shif. Might not. I'm uncertain...

Keep in mind that when he introduced the cosmological constant everyone still thought that our galaxy was the only thing in the universe. Hubble figured out that that was wrong about a decade later (and half a decade before noting the correlation between red shift and distance).