- April 19, 2015
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Einstein’s death 60 years ago this Sunday marked the beginning of a strange journey for one of the most precious parts of their anatomy. Your Brain
Saved flasks and chopped into fine pieces, preserved until today the power to inspire wonder and arouse the curiosity of scientists.
After his death on April 18, 1955, the body of Einstein was cremated … but not all.
“When I first heard the story of the brain of Albert Einstein I thought it was an urban legend, it was too weird to be true,” recalls a conversation with the BBC Michael Paternini, author of “Walking with Mr. Albert: a trip across the US with Einstein’s brain. “
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.
“I first heard the story of the brain of Albert Einstein as an urban legend too weird to be true”.
Paternini, interested in history, 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 passed and the promise of Harvey, repeated again and again, that reveal key brain one of the geniuses of history gave no fruit.
With the brain in the trunk
Harvey received much criticism for his messy methods and not achieve any scientific result.
“Cut parts of the 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 man suitable for the job, if anyone had ever given her good to do 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.
“I met Harvey was a kind and gentle person,” says Paternini .
But taciturn and reserved. “The trip lasted 6,400 miles, but I felt like there were 16,000″.
Harvey fell into deep silence and could spend the time taken 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 on 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.
journalists camped in the garden of his house and interviewed the medical journal Science.
Advances scientists
One of the researchers who asked brain samples Einstein 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 of Einstein’s brain had some peculiarity that was behind the genius scientist.
More recently, in 2012, Frederick Lepore, Professor of Neurology at Rutgers University anthropologist Dean Falk and University of Florida, could 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 tells the BBC Lepore.
” But when examined photos, has a Anatomy very extraordinary, “said the scientist.
Most people have three prefrontal turns, while Einstein was four to have one extra in the middle frontal lobe.
spins are surface elevations 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, the McMaster University (Canada), had reviewed the anatomy of the cerebral cortex of Einstein in 1999 and, according to Falk, was she who divulged 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 of the brain responsible for spatial awareness and mathematical thinking.
But science is checking herself.
“With all the pictures could look all lobes from all perspectives, and saw that yes, the parietal lobes were exceptionally large, but so were the temporal lobes, occipital, frontal, etc.” Lapore says.
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 outstanding, but are willing to admit that it is impossible to relate these anatomical differences between 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,” concludes .
“Einstein had a very distinct from the other race. 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, we might say something with more security. “
On the other hand, there is a limit to what can be done 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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