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Probe of Einstein's Brain Reveals Clues To His Genius
sciencehabit writes "Smart, successful, and well-connected: a good description of Albert Einstein and his brain. The father of relativity theory didn't live to see modern brain imaging techniques, but after his death his brain was sliced into sections and photographed. Now, scientists have used those cross-sectional photos to reveal a larger-than-average corpus callosum — the bundle of nerve fibers connecting the brain's two hemispheres. The thickness of Einstein's corpus callosum was greater than the average, and more nerve fibers connected key regions such as the two sides of the prefrontal cortex, which are responsible for complex thought and decision-making. Combined with previous evidence that parts of the physicist's brain were unusually large and intricately folded, the researchers suggest that this feature helps account for his extraordinary gifts." Abstract (full article is paywalled) at the journal Brain.
If Einstein were alive, he would have told you, as he told them when he was still alive -- he wasn't particularly intelligent, only passionately curious. That's paraphrasing a direct quote. He probably would have also told you to stand outside utterly fascinating by water drops falling out of a fountain instead of going to accept your award for being so smart, and run around town in your loafers not giving a fuck what anyone else thought of you.
Maybe it's not intelligence per-se that we need to encourage, but non-conformity and the ability to embrace new ideas without pre-judgement.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I've read a lot about neuroscience discoveries and interesting abnormalities and didn't know the direct correlation between the corpus collosum thickness and intelligence. Ok, so when someone claims something like this article I think - bah... another stupid claim about Einstein. But this time there is some merit to the claim. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2754582/ And yes, his other brain differences were know for a while, so this seems to be a new revelation based on new evidence of the correlation and the discovered photos.
Hmm, so we're comparing photographs of a fixed/preserved and sliced brain with those acquired by an MRI. Does anyone know what kind of variance or error these different imaging techniques introduce? There is enough variability in brain size and location of features that normal comparisons of one person's brain via MRI with another person's brain are rather meaningless. The standard procedure is to warp MRI brain scans to a common brain, and then run the comparisons of warped/normalized images....
i don't know karate, but i know ca-razy
Thomas Stoltz Harvey (a pathologist) conducted Albert Einstein's autopsy. What they seem to omit (probably due to embarrassment) is that he stole Albert Einstein's brain. Apparently he was trying to figure out (and take the credit to be famous) the very same thing, what made Albert Einstein so intelligent. He became obsessed and it ended up destroying his life and marriages, yes, multiple marriages. The only thing two things he did right was preserve the brain properly (though he sliced it into many parts) and eventually (decades later) return the brain. If you think he got his just deserts, well, take solace in that his selfish actions destroyed him.
you can see this and other disturbing true tales in Dark Matters: Twisted But True on Netflix or your local torrent site.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
it is just correlation, not a causation. That is a much higher bar to clear.
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homosexual men have enlarged corpus collums too. http://paws.kettering.edu/~pstanche/ArchSexBehav.pdf what do these macro imaging studies really tell us?
Just replace it with an electronic one. A simple one should suffice. it just needs to be progrsmmed to say "what?" and "where's the tea?"
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
" his brain had unusual features which may have provided certain advantages"
Or... his life revolved around unusual studies which caused his brain to respond by developing the corpos callosum?
Thomas Edison was no genius, he just hired a bunch of smart people. Do not confuse an Edison or a Ford with Tesla or an Einstein. Ford and Edison were normal people with lots of resources who were very successful at getting people to produce results. People like Tesla and Einstein are geniuses.
Ford and Edison were normal people with lots of resources ...
Neither Ford nor Edison were born rich. Both endured hardship. The "lots of resources" came from their early individual successes.
... who were very successful at getting people to produce results.
Except that "normal" people are rarely successful at that.
I think this is right on, but it extends much farther than just "true geniuses". Personally, I'm one of those highly technical people who are really good at the nitty gritty details of making technology work, but as I've learned more about myself over the years I've realized that I need to make sure I stay in the technical arena, rather than going into management or some of the purely "visionary" roles, because the high level of technical talent I have doesn't mean I have a commensurately high level of visionary talent. I've learned that a good idea for me is to seek out the visionary types in my organization and try to get myself onto their projects, because they can supply overall direction and I can provide a really good technical implementation. I'm not trying to compare myself to Woz, Einstein, Tesla, or these other geniuses, because I'm not nearly that smart, but I do think the principle extends to me an many others. There is an almost symbiotic relationship that can be had when technical people realize they need visionaries, and visionaries respect and treat the technical people well. I think it applies to much of industry, not just super geniuses and super visionaries.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.