It’s like what they say about a perfect short story…it never ends even after it ends. So too with Einstein. Fifty seven years after this redoubtable mathematician and physicist ended his life from a ruptured aortic aneurysm, his brain continues to flow endless. And not just mathematically, but anatomically. But first, let us turn our attention to this scoop news before we grapple with his post mortem saga.
According to a new study lead by Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk and his colleagues Fredrick E. Lepore l and Adrianne Noe, Einstein’s extraordinary cognitive underpinnings could be related to extra folding in his brain’s gray matter, the site of conscious thinking. Findings further note that the prefrontal cortex, which plays a key role in abstract thought, making predictions and planning, also lodged unusually elaborate folding pattern.
All these are racy and exquisite thoughts. Yet, how clinching are these findings? More importantly, where do we stand now? Was Albert a born Einstein or just a smart kid in the block who grew up special after years of pondering physics? Before we try addressing these surging dichotomies, we will revisit the journey of his brain that started soon after his demise.
It all started with one Thomas Harvey, a pathologist who removed Einstein’s brain during autopsy. He apparently held on to this brain for dear life, for quite some time none really knew about its whereabouts. He had this alarming conviction that all of Einstein’s talents lay in his cerebral anatomy. Being a pathologist and not a neuroscientist, this was understandable, although possibly myopic.
Nevertheless, Einstein’s brain toured the world. From Marion C. Diamond, through Arnold B. Scheibel, to Greer . Murphy, information poured on how Einstein’s increase number of ‘glial’ cells could explain his increased metabolic activity. Later, Neuroscience Letters further apprised that Einstein was able to pack more neurons in a given area of cortex than others. In came Sandra Witelson, a researcher from McMaster University, Canada and a new hypothesis tumbled forth…that Einstein’s absence of Sylvian Fissure (the deepest and the most prominent of the cortical fissures) can explain enhanced skills such as mathematical ability, spatial reasoning and three-dimensional visualization, secondary to an enhanced parietal space.
But, here comes the quintessential question. Is it all anatomical? Is it all in the extra folding and glial cells? Or in the absence of a certain Sylvian Fissure? Walter Freeman, from University of California, Berkeley, may not agree. In his landmark book, How Brain Make up Their Minds, he shows that the power to choose is an essential and unalienable property of brains, and that it forms the foundation for the growth and flourishing of individuals. In other words, not all is determined by the structures, genes and the environment. Rather, there is room to create through what we believe and how we behave.
Are we crossing swords with Descartes` then? Was he mistaken in his dictum, “I think, therefore I am”? Or was Hamlet, off the mark…was To be or not to be, the question, or is it To be or to become?
We don’t know yet. We are still scratching the surface. We certainly cannot go on digging graves and blasting brains of geniuses. The future might lie with superior functional and imaging studies. Till that time, let our blunt fascination for Einstein’s brain continue.