Einstein: the brain was studied, the conclusion of what did not

(I)

Speaking of Einstein we are all familiar with them, as the greatest scientist of the twentieth century, he is undoubtedly a fighter in the scientific community. In fact, in the scum world, he is also a fighter in the scum.

Einstein had a super macho tendency in the family, he demanded his wife to obey him, and if he was not careful, he would be scolded, and his attitude was mean and rude. At the same time, Einstein fell in love with his cousin outside of marriage, and after divorcing his wife to marry his cousin, Einstein had many women outside and even looked at his stepdaughter. It can be said that the life and family of Einstein, can not be called great at all.

But the scum of life can not deny Einstein's great contributions to science. So, many people wonder: why Einstein can achieve such remarkable results, is his head shape not the same as ours? Or the composition of the brain is different from ours? We all wanted to cut Einstein's head open and study it, but Einstein was very stingy and refused to agree. So, we waited and waited, and finally, the opportunity came.

In the early morning of April 18, 1955, 76-year-old Albert Einstein died in Princeton University Hospital in the United States. According to Einstein's will was requested to cremate the body and scatter the ashes in a secret location. But Harvey, a doctor at the time, did not follow this will and removed Einstein's brain from the laboratory at Princeton University Medical Center for future research.

This incident made Einstein's son Hans very angry. But Harvey persuaded Hans with his three words, including that he would only study Einstein's brain in the scientific community, never for commercial use, and that he believed Einstein would be willing to donate his body for medical research. Hans was said to be dumbfounded, the original father-son relationship is not good, Hans thought less is better, you'd better collect his remains, and save him the trouble, so he agreed.

Harvey weighed Einstein's brain first: 1230 grams (less than the average 1360g). Then he grabbed a large knife, clicked, and chopped, dismantling the brain in 240 pieces, with each piece's position in the brain recorded and labeled in detail; he also made 12 sets of 200 slides containing an index of tissue samples. At the moment, Harvey is the big brother selling meat in the supermarket: weighing, chopping, and labeling the price in one go.

Then, while everyone was waiting for Harvey to publish his report on Einstein's brain research, he didn't hear anything. This silence is more than 20 years. So the scientific community exploded, said you Harvey what do you mean, is not accidentally Einstein's brain as a pig brain roasted to eat; no, you can not play at home alone with Einstein's brain, you open a party we also want to roast together, I also brought ten bunches of pork loin, ten bunches of chicken heart.

Harvey is also heart bitter, this 20 years he did not idle, he went home every day to take a ruler to measure Einstein's brain, but no matter how he measured how to compare, is not found Einstein's brain and others have what is different. He wanted to tell everyone about this discovery, but he was afraid that people would laugh at his low level, mainly because the results did not meet everyone's expectations of Einstein's brain. Forced by various external pressures, he complied with the "public opinion" and contributed Einstein's brain to the research institution, so that everyone could go to pound it, and he was finally relieved.

Soon after, the results came out.

(II)

In 1985, Diamond published his findings in Experimental Neurology.

Einstein's brain contained many more glial cells than those with average intelligence.

Before understanding this finding, let's understand the composition of the brain's nerve cells. The brain has two main types of cells: nerve cells and glial cells. They are like two kinds of people on the battlefield: soldiers fighting on the front line and logisticians. Nerve cells are like soldiers fighting on the front line, they are responsible for processing and processing information; while glial cells are like logistic support, responsible for providing nerve cells with sustenance and protection.

As the old saying goes: before the soldiers move, the food and grass are first, and excellent logistics is a prerequisite for winning battles; on the contrary, "robbing the food and grass" is often a common tactic of many battlefield masters. In Einstein's brain, the number of glial cells (for example, others have a nerve cell supported by ten glial cells; his nerve cell has fifteen glial cells support), also means that his nerve cells have more logistical support, then, of course, his combat power will be strong. And the scientific community has also found that an increased number of glial cells is thought to possibly predict a higher IQ.

Just as everyone started to cheer, Dr. Terrence Hoynes of Pace University in New York threw a big dose of cold water on the conclusion. He pointed out that Einstein's brain had more neuroglia, not that they were already more, but that the nerve cells had died some, and so appeared to have more neuroglia. In the same battlefield example, originally a front-line soldier had two security personnel, but after a war, half of the front-line soldiers died in battle, so now it looks like one soldier has four security personnel.

For Einstein, what is this war? It is aging!

Nerve cells in the human brain are not renewable. That is, since birth, the "soldiers" in our brains are used in one less state. But you do not need to be nervous, our nerve cells are very durable, and generally not bad. However, the decline is very obvious in old age: when we get older, we become "old and confused", "old children", etc. This is due to the reduction of nerve cells. Einstein died at the age of 76, the nerve cells in his brain entered the decline stage, and his "soldiers" have been killed in action, of course, logistics look like more.

Bam! What was thought to be an amazing discovery was slammed to the ground!

The academic circle is silent again, this time for 14 years!

(iii)

In 1999, Canadian scholar Sandra Whitson published findings in The Lancet that

The subparietal areas of the left and right hemispheres of Einstein's brain were 15% wider and thicker than the average person.

To explain this finding, we have to explain the division of labor in the brain.

Feel your forehead, the area below this area of the brain called the frontal lobe, which is responsible for higher thinking functions such as reasoning, moral sense, decision making, and self-control. Feel the top of your ears. The brain inside this area is called the temporal lobe, which is responsible for hearing (right next to your ears), long-term memory, etc. Feel the back of your head, the area underneath is called the occipital lobe (that's where you sleep on your pillow; unless you sleep on your back), it's mainly responsible for vision, what your eyes see will run to here for processing.

Finally, feel the "spin" of hair on your head, below which is the parietal lobe. The area of the brain near the parietal lobe is responsible for mathematical thinking, motor imagination, and spatial awareness. So the authors reasoned that this is probably the main reason why Einstein had a different logical thinking and spatial cognitive ability.

As a result, the scientific community was in an uproar again, thinking that the secret of the brain had finally been discovered.

As a result, this conclusion was soon knocked back again. The reason is this: the brain, like our muscles, follows the law of use and rejection. If you often go to the gym to exercise a certain muscle, it will become thicker; similarly, if you often use a certain area of the brain, the brain where the nerve cells will also become larger or send a lot of branches, making this piece bigger.

What does Einstein do? Theoretical house (physics), is sitting in the house every day to imagine and calculate the laws of the workings of the universe. Well, he was exercising these "muscles" in the parietal region of his brain every day, and, strangely, they are not bigger. So, Einstein's brain is larger in the lower parietal lobes, as a result of his regular use. And not the other way around, because he was big in this area, so he developed these abilities.

This caused the shock of the discovery and was stepped on the ground and rubbed many times, rubbing ......

Of course, people do not give up the quest.

(IV)

In 2014, Weiwei Men of East China Normal University and anthropologist Dean Fox published their findings in the academic journal Brain (Brain), where he analyzed a previously unpublished set of photographs of Einstein's entire brain and found that the corpus callosum of Einstein's brain was thicker than the corpus callosum of a regular person's brain. The nerve fibers in the corpus callosum are responsible for connecting the left and right brains, as well as connecting important areas of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for complex thinking and decision-making, so the cooperation between Einstein's brain hemispheres is much more active than in normal people.

This time, there was no reaction from the academic community, not even a cheer.

For, this finding was immediately questioned. When we talked about Sperry's right and left brain studies earlier, we mentioned that the corpus callosum is the tissue that connects the left and right brains. One feature of the corpus callosum is that a certain area of the corpus callosum is responsible for connecting certain brain regions of the left and right brain. Therefore, if an abnormality is found in a certain area of the corpus callosum, it can be assumed that the connection between certain brain areas of the left and right brain is abnormal.

In this study, does the fact that certain parts of Einstein's corpus callosum were thicker than the average person's mean that certain areas of his left and right brain interacted better than others? The answer is: I don't know. For one thing, Einstein's brain was preserved by slicing it after his death, close to 60 years ago, and it is hard to say whether it was deformed. Also, even if these are not problems, we may explain the change in corpus callosum morphology due to frequent use of the left and right brain, rather than the change in corpus callosum morphology causing Einstein's bullish achievements.

I'll bet a dollar that, along these lines, you find a random person and compare his corpus callosum shape to the average human corpus callosum shape and you will always find something different. The question is, what does that tell you?

(V)

Although many people have tried to explore the differences between Einstein's brain and the average person, and thus explore the secret of Einstein's amazing scientific achievements. However, the current results prove that Einstein's brain is not fundamentally different from that of ordinary people. When you think about it, the scientists who studied Einstein's brain are caught in a strange circle - they have to find out different to prove their conclusions! Harvey, the doctor, was the first victim.

For us ordinary people, the inspiration of this matter is: do not establish a connection between the size, shape, and other physical characteristics of their heads and certain abilities. For an individual, what is important is the thoughts flowing in the brain, for it to grow big or small, what shape it grows into is not important.