Al­bert Ein­stein’s Brain gets new lookover

Parts of Albert Einstein’s brain are visibly unlike those of most people and this could help account for his genius according to a new study.

In it, Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk and colleagues explain for the first time the entire thinker cortex, of Einstein’s brain from a test of 14 recently discovered photographs.

The researchers compared the path breaking physicist’s brain to 85 normal human brains and, in light of current imaging studies, interpreted what they called its unusual features. They examined relative sizes of different sections and the pattern of sulci, or surface folds.

Although the over all size and asymmetric shape of Einstein’s brain were normal, the prefrontal, so ma to sensory, primary motor, parietal, chronological and occipital cortices were strange,” said Falk, referring to exact sections of the cerebral cortex.

The prefrontal cortex is known as the seat of cognitive analysis and abstract thought, and is sometimes re­ferred to as the “CEO of the brain. Specific parts of Einstein’s prefrontal cortex are “relatively expanded, Falk and colleagues wrote, “which may have provided underpinnings for some of his extraordi­nary cognitive abilities.

These same brain areas are associated with the emergence of higher cognitive abilities in evolution, they added.

The find­ings were pub­lished Nov. 16 in the jour­nal Brain.

The part of Ein­stein’s cerebral cortex the occipital lobe associated with the processing of visual information was  very convoluted compared to the average, Falk and colleagues noted. This may have reflected extra processing power for mentally visualizing things, they suggested.

Upon Einstein’s death in 1955, his brain was removed and photographed from multiple angles with the permission of his family. Furthermore, it was sectioned into 240 blocks from which microscope slides were prepared.

 A great majority of the photographs, blocks and slides were lost from public sight for more than 55 years.

The photos used by the researchers are held by the National Museum of Health and Med­i­cine in Sil­ver Spring, Md.

The paper also publishes a roadmap to Ein­stein’s brain prepared in 1955 by the physician Thomas Harvey to illustrate the locations within Einstein’s previously whole brain of 240 dissected blocks of tissue.