The left and right hemispheres of Albert Einstein's brain were unusually well connected and may have contributed to his brilliance, a new study has suggested.
Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist, Dean Falk, said that this study provides new information that helps make sense of what is known about the surface of Einstein's brain.
Lead author Weiwei Men of East China Normal University's Department of Physics developed a new technique to conduct the study, which is the first to detail Einstein's corpus callosum, the brain's largest bundle of fibers that connects the two cerebral hemispheres and facilitates interhemispheric communication.
Men's technique measures and color-codes the varying thicknesses of subdivisions of the corpus callosum along its length, where nerves cross from one side of the brain to the other.
These thicknesses indicate the number of nerves that cross and therefore how 'connected' the two sides of the brain are in particular regions, which facilitate different functions depending on where the fibers cross along the length.
In particular, this new technique permitted registration and comparison of Einstein's measurements with those of two samples -- one of 15 elderly men and one of 52 men Einstein's age in 1905.
During his so-called 'miracle year' at 26 years old, Einstein published four articles that contributed substantially to the foundation of modern physics and changed the world's views about space, time, mass and energy.
The study has been published in the journal Brain.