Einstein’s death 60 years ago this Sunday marked the beginning of a strange journey for one of the most precious parts of your anatomy: your brain
. Saved in jars and chopped into fine pieces, c onserva until today the power to inspire wonder and arouse the curiosity of scientists
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After his death on April 18, 1955, Einstein’s body was cremated … but not all.
“When I first heard the story of brain of Albert Einstein I thought it was an urban legend, as it was too weird to be true, “recalls a conversation with the BBC Michael Paternini, author of” Walking with Mr. Albert: A Trip across America with the brain Einstein “.
After the death of scientist, the brain was removed from the body with the intent to analyze to discover the key to his genius.
It was the American pathologist Thomas Harvey who managed to keep the brain of the father of the Theory of Relativity, probably without the consent of the family.
Paternini, interested in history, he managed to find the pathologist when he was an old man of 84 years.
After getting the brain, Harvey had managed to take it home and kept it in a large glass jar.
But the years went l a promise Harvey, repeated again and again, that reveal the keys to the brain of one of the geniuses of history gave no fruit.
up with the brain in the trunk
Harvey received much criticism for his messy methods and for not achieving any scientific result.
“Cut parts brain and began to send experts in anatomy. But the results over the years were inconclusive “ says Paternini.
” The articles published had no effect, “he explains.
” It seemed the right man for the job, if anyone had ever given his approval to do so seen, “said the reporter.
After finding Harvey, Paternini and he embarked on a journey across America in search of the daughter of Einstein’s brain with his father in the trunk, journalist experience expressed in his book.
“The Harvey I knew it was a kind and gentle person, “says Paternini.
But taciturn and reserved.” The trip lasted 6,400 miles, but I felt like they were 16,000. “
Harvey fell in deep silence and could spend the time it took to go a whole state without speaking.
The journalist believes that the strategy was devised by the pathologist in response to criticism that he had received throughout his life.
“I searched their underlying motives. Harvey thought I was doing something important, protecting and preserving the brain for the benefit of future generations, “said the reporter.
The pathologist died in 2007 without publishing any research Einstein’s brain, but his effort was not entirely in vain.
Harvey took pictures of the brain and cut it into 240 slices to be seen with a microscope, which sent the major US neuropathologists of his time.
But these did not match him with great discoveries.
However, after the appearance of an article about Harvey in a magazine in the summer of 1978, things began to change.
Reporters camped in the garden of his house and Science magazine interviewed the doctor.
up Scientific advances
> One of the researchers who asked samples of Einstein’s brain was Marian Diamond, University of California, Berkeley.
With it began the era of studies of Einstein’s brain.
The article published by Diamond in 1985 said that Einstein had more glial cells per neuron than the control group used in the experiment.
These cells are involved in performing a supportive role to neurons.
The article reaffirmed the idea that Einstein’s brain had some peculiarity that was after the genius scientist.
More recently, in 2012, Frederick Lepore, Professor of Neurology at Rutgers University anthropologist Dean Falk and University of Florida were able to study some previously unseen photos of Einstein’s brain.
“It’s an exceptional brain. But not for its size. It weighed 1,230 grams, which for a man of 76 years (the age of Einstein when he died) is not exceptionally large,” he Lepore says the BBC.
“But when examined photos, has a very special anatomy” said the scientist.
Most people have three prefrontal turns, while Einstein was four to have one extra in the middle frontal lobe.
The twists are the elevations of the surface of the brain that occur when folded bark. They are separated by grooves.
“It has many other things (other). All lobes of the brain are different from the normal anatomy.”
Lepore and Falk published their research in the journal Brain.
Sandra Witelson, McMaster University (Canada), had reviewed the anatomy of the cerebral cortex of Einstein in 1999 and, according to Falk, was she who reported the idea that Einstein was a “parietal genius.”
Witelson said the inferior parietal lobe Einstein was wider than normal and seemed better integrated. And that’s the part the brain responsible for spatial awareness and mathematical thinking.
P ero science is reviewing itself.
“With all the pictures we could check all lobes from all perspectives, and saw that yes, the parietal lobes were exceptionally large, but so were the temporal lobes, occipital, frontal, etc., “says Lapore.
up brain activity
One of the questions surrounding this issue is whether Einstein was born with cerebral these characteristics or these were developed after a life dedicated to complex thoughts.
People are born with specific convolutions in the brain, but do not know to what extent are influenced by experience and practice.
Falk and his team insist that Einstein’s brain is exceptional but are willing to admit that it is impossible to relate these anatomical differences with the genius of Einstein with certainty.
“If you put me against the wall and ask me where did the theory of special relativity, where did the theory of general relativity, we have no idea “ says.
” Einstein had a very distinct from the rest career. We do not know what effect it has on the structure of your brain spending 20 or 30 years of your life thinking about complex mathematical problems. It is very difficult to separate cause and effect “ explains James Gallagher, editor of the BBC Health.
” In addition, we are talking about just a brain of a genius. If I we had the 100 Nobel laureates and all share a functional difference could say something with more security. “
On the other hand, there is a limit to what you can do with the remains of a brain. If Einstein were alive, scientists proceed very differently.
“We would be analyzing the activity in different areas of the brain where different tasks are developed,” says Gallagher.
Today you could analyze the activity of individual neurons, thousands of them at the same time, for “much more detail than the brain actively ago, not only the way it looks.”
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