As a world-famous scientist, Einstein's brain has attracted a lot of attention. Let me tell you the secret of Einstein's brain!
What does Einstein's extraordinary brain hide?
1955, early morning of April 18. Princeton Hospital, New Jersey, USA.
An old man made a strange noise in his hospital bed, and Alberta, the night watchman, came to see him at once. The old man mumbled a language she didn't understand. He died peacefully after two deep breaths. Later, it was speculated that the old man spoke his native German before he died. Seventy-six years ago, he was born into a Jewish family in Ulm, a small town in southern Germany. His name is Albert? Einstein.
For a long time after that, as one of the precious treasures in human history, Einstein's brain drifted around with a dismissed doctor until he returned to Princeton Hospital fifty years later. But behind this legend, scientists have never given up studying Einstein's brain. Just as Einstein grasped the essence of energy and matter with his famous formula, we are also trying to grasp the essence of genius.
Who took Einstein's brain?
The night Einstein died, pathologist Thomas? Harvey opened Einstein's skull, injected preservatives into the cerebral artery and soaked the brain in a fixed potion. The smartest brain in history has been preserved. Although Dr. Harvey promised to use Einstein's brain for scientific research and got permission from Einstein's family, this move still caused endless controversy. Even several famous neuropathologists strongly advised Harvey to give up these samples, but Harvey refused. Soon, he was fired from Princeton Hospital.
In the following time, the genius brain has been with Harvey, bringing him bad luck and short-lived fame. He experienced divorce, long-distance moving, unemployment and revocation of his medical license. He later became an assembler in a plastic factory in Kansas. The beat generation? The famous decadent poet William in the novel? Burrows are neighbors. They often call each other brothers and have a drink, although Burroughs used to brag about it? I can have Einstein's brain at any time. Harvey regards these samples as life.
1997, Harvey took a brain sample with reporter Mike? Pudeni traveled across the United States to visit Einstein's granddaughter in California. Harvey had intended to send these samples to the descendants of scientists, but he finally changed his mind and left her home quickly. In Pudeni's description, Harvey is a strange old man, full of Don Quixote fantasies, and sometimes bursts into inexplicable laughter.
Thirty years of silence
To be fair, Harvey's stubbornness and enthusiasm for Einstein's brain is not entirely for fame, let alone for money. He repeatedly refused to pay high prices for these brain samples. Harvey has always kept his promise to Einstein's family and tried his best in the second half of his life, hoping to interpret the wisdom code of this great scientist in a scientific way. As soon as the brain was fixed, Harvey measured it carefully and took many photos from different angles. According to Harvey's determination, Einstein's brain weighs 1230 grams. Unlike people's expectations of genius, this weight is only a low value among elderly men in their seventies.
Shortly after Harvey was dismissed, he took his brain to Philadelphia Hospital, where trained technicians carefully cut this precious central nervous tissue into 240 pieces according to the authoritative anatomical map of the brain. Some brain blocks were further sliced and fixed on the glass. Harvey made twelve sets of such brain slices, and then he sent them to the most famous scientists in the field of neuroscience, hoping that they could make amazing discoveries. The rest of the paper towels are wrapped in transparent collodion, hung in large glass bottles filled with formaldehyde fixative and silently placed in cartons in Harvey's basement or office.
In the first 30 years, apart from the occasional announcement by scientists, whether it is the general shape or the number of nerve cells? It's no different from ordinary people's brains. Moreover, these unique nerve tissues have not detonated any scientific discoveries.
Even the only news sensation came from Einstein's own reputation. In August, 1978, New Jersey Monthly reporter Steve? Levi turned around and found Harvey. When the glass bottle with Einstein's brain appeared in front of Levi, he? Completely lost the language? Watching the ups and downs in the clear and fixed liquid with shock and admiration? Peanut candy bar? About the same size of brain tissue? Is this a religious experience? Steve later wrote. His article immediately made the press crazy, and many reporters camped outside Harvey's office, disrupting his life. Of course, as time goes on, the enthusiasm for curiosity gradually fades. And those unusual tissue blocks are still ups and downs in the glass bottle.
The mouse playing with toys and Einstein
One day in the early 1980 s, Marianne, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley? Diamond sat in her husband's office, doing nothing. Can only think alone? . Nearly twenty years ago, she found that if mice were placed in an environment with various toys, the ratio of glial cells to neurons in their brains would be higher than that of mice placed in a normal environment. She believes that glial cells provide nutrition for neurons, and the increase in their proportion shows that mice growing up in rich environments are more active in nerve activity and need more nutrition.
In this boring afternoon, Diamond thought of some graduate students' reports about Harvey posted on the laboratory wall, and suddenly realized that she might ask Harvey for some samples. Perhaps the proportion of glial cells in this unusual brain is higher than that of ordinary people.
According to Diamond, she called Harvey once every six months, and three years later, Harvey finally sent her four dollars? How big is the sugar cube? Brain tissue. Her experimental results were published in Experimental Neurology 1985. After comparing Einstein's brain with the brains of eleven ordinary people, she found that the proportion of glial cells in Einstein's brain was indeed twice that of others in the specimen located in the left parietal lobe.
? This phenomenon shows that when Einstein showed his extraordinary rational thinking ability, the activity in this area of the brain was enhanced. ? She deduced from this.
Harvey's long-awaited scientific discovery came late, and the media set off a new round of Einstein frenzy. However, this research report is controversial in the scientific community.
Dr. Kansha of Osaka Institute of Life Sciences in Japan traded eleven for diamonds? Ordinary people? The brain questioned: What kind of ordinary people are these? How did you die? Einstein is 76 years old. Why is the average life expectancy of these eleven people only 64? Is the proportion of glial cells higher only because Einstein's nerve cells die more during aging?
Professor Hain of Pace University in new york put it more bluntly: This study is full of fallacies, and the result is unbelievable. ?
The first truly amazing discovery
Ten years later, a fax came from Sandra, a professor at McMaster University in Canada. In front of Wittson is a simple question: Would you like to cooperate with me to study Einstein's brain? Thomas signed it? Harvey.
Witson didn't know Harvey, but perhaps because of Einstein's magic, she took a piece of white paper and wrote? what's up Fax it back.
Witson had the largest number of brain specimens in the world at that time. From 1977 to 1987, she successfully persuaded 120 patients with advanced cancer to donate their brains. Her research results have been published in many high-level academic journals. The most famous and controversial is about her comparison of brain structure between men and women. For example, she found that the average density of neurons in the temporal lobe of the brain is higher than that of men 12%, which may explain why women are usually better at communication.
So, in 1995, when Harvey, 84, read Witson's article, he thought that he might finally wait for the person who could solve the mystery. After receiving Wittson's affirmative reply, the old man carefully put the glass bottle with Einstein's brain in his shabby Dodge car, drove south, crossed the US-Canada border and personally brought it to Wittson.
Witson finally chose fourteen samples, and Harvey had never given so many brain samples to others. Surprisingly, her most important discovery did not come from direct observation of these samples, but from the photos of this brain taken by Harvey at 1955.
Wittson found that the lower part of Einstein's parietal lobe was wider than the average person. Besides, most people have a brain called? Lateral crack? The ditch passes through here, and the tail of the ditch is slightly split into pieces. On the edge? In Einstein's brain photos, his lateral fissure merged with another sulcus before entering the lower parietal lobe, and the superior gyrus appeared more complete.
Witson believes that under normal circumstances, the areas with dense nerve connections in the brain form convex gyrus, while the areas with sparse nerve connections are concave into the sulcus. Einstein's sudden lateral sulcus reflects that the lower part of his parietal lobe is denser than ordinary people.
Witson's research is obviously more respected than Diamond's. 1999, and her results were published in The Lancet.
Until today, the study of Einstein's brain has surfaced from time to time. On May 4 this year, Dean, a professor of anthropology at Florida State University? Falk published his latest research results in Frontiers of Evolutionary Neuroscience. He claimed that the structure of this brain contains many asymmetric components, and it is probably these varied sulcus that make Einstein a unique genius. In addition, he also found a special spherical structure in Einstein's right motor cortex, which was also found in the brains of other musicians, probably related to Einstein's violin training since childhood.
? Top Ye Tiancai? Where does wisdom come from?
Because these experiments all point to Einstein's distinctive parietal lobe, the parietal lobe? Such names began to appear in various media. So where is the parietal lobe and what is its function?
Raise your hands, put them on the back of the left and right auricles respectively, move your hands behind your head and stick to your scalp, and meet at the most prominent place at the top. The area under the skull that your hand just touched is almost where the parietal lobe is.
The inferior parietal lobe of Einstein's brain is wider than ordinary people, just below this area. Here is the intersection of vision, hearing, body feeling (feeling of all parts of the body) and vestibular nerve pathways, which is considered by many scientists as the place where the human body synthesizes various senses and produces advanced nerve and cognitive activities. This brain region is responsible for visual spatial cognition, mathematical ability and motor imagination. If the parietal lobe is injured, the patient will not be able to complete some complicated dialogue, reading and positioning activities.
As one of the greatest theoretical physicists in history, Einstein's extraordinary abstract ability is beyond doubt. He once said that he thought almost without words, but with pictographic imagination like watching a movie, which echoed the imagination and spatial cognitive function of the lower parietal lobe of the brain. In addition, Wittson and other scientists concluded that the expansion of Einstein's inferior parietal lobe affected the regional development of adjacent competent languages. Isn't it a household name that Einstein couldn't speak until he was three years old?
However, can this area only three fingers wide really explain Einstein's legendary achievements? Scientists questioned. It has been pointed out that Einstein's average score in painting and geography classes in middle school is contrary to the fact that he has a developed parietal lobe. Moreover, there are many people with wide parietal leaves, the most obvious of which is early blindness. Because they can no longer accept visual signals, the functional area of the parietal lobe extends to the occipital lobe, which is usually used to process visual information. If the enlargement of the parietal lobe can make Einstein, the blind school would have been the Nobel Prize base.
In addition, Frederic, a professor at the New England School of Medicine? Lepore pointed out that people are not static, and it is doubtful whether the study of a 76-year-old man's brain can explain the extraordinary neural activity of the 26-year-old who shocked the world with the theory of relativity. In fact, even if we can spy out the shape of young Einstein's sulcus, can we certainly analyze his intellectual ability from it?
In 2005, Harvey finally handed over his treasured samples. Einstein's brain was sent back to Princeton Hospital for removal.
On April 5, 2007, Harvey died in Princeton at the age of 95. In the same city, Einstein's brain is still kept in the basement of the pathology laboratory. Fifty-two years ago, he personally took out the legendary brain, hoping to see where great wisdom came from; By the time he died, the development of neuroscience had far exceeded everything he could imagine. However, the key he waited for to open the gobbledygook never appeared.
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