The Strange Story of Einstein’s Brain
I was desperately searching all day for photographic inspiration for the day’s challenge at We’re Here! Our task is to post an image about Brains.
I thought about the MRI Department at the local hospital, but I was already thrown out of there for taking pictures once this week. I have no XRays of my brain – or anyone else’s brain, for that matter. I was wracking my little pea brain, and getting nothing. Finally I stopped by the library on my way home from work and picked up a Nova episode called, How Smart Can We Get?” The opening screen presented chapters, and the first one was “Einstein’s Brain”. Bingo – I finally had the start of an idea. But you might be surprised at how weird the story gets.
When Einstein died in 1955 the physician conducting the autopsy, Thomas Harvey, removed the brain – apparently without permission – and kept it for himself. He photographed the brain, and later dissected it into 240 cubes, preserved them, and stored them in a couple of large Mason jars. Harvey moved around the country a bit, and carried the jars with him, keeping them in basements and garages. When re-discovered in 1978 the jars had been in a cider box stashed under a beer cooler for years. In 2010 Harvey’s heirs finally turned the brain remnants and photographs over to the National Museum of Health and Medicine.
Dean Faulk, a neuroanthropologist who specializes in the evolution of the brain and cognition in higher primates, has made a study of 14 of the photographs. In the Nova program she explained that one very interesting feature of Einstein’s brain is the presence of an enlarged ‘knob’ that represents enlarged motor representation for the left hand. This is an unusual feature that is seen in some long-time right-handed violinists. Einstein was such a violinist.
“[W]henever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music, and that would usually resolve all his difficulties," recalled his son Hans. (www.cbcmusic.ca/posts/18221/albert-einstein-birthday-10-t...)
So, it is interesting that Einstein obviously had an amazing brain., but that his exposure to music and many years of playing the violin had a formative impact on his brain.
I conclude this very long story about “Brains” with a quote which perhaps I now understand better, from the great man himself. In speaking about the Theory of Relativity Einstein said:
“It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.”
My portrait is by Ferdinand Schmutzer [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons. The brain on the table is a screen shot from the PBS Nova program, “How Smart Can We Get?” The violin and music are mine.
And, here are some of the websites I visited in reading up on this topic:
www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/20/einsteins_brain_analysed/
phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/21/the-tragic-st...
www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/04/closer-look-einsteins-brain
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_brain
blog.oup.com/2013/01/einstein-brain-photographs/
The Strange Story of Einstein’s Brain
I was desperately searching all day for photographic inspiration for the day’s challenge at We’re Here! Our task is to post an image about Brains.
I thought about the MRI Department at the local hospital, but I was already thrown out of there for taking pictures once this week. I have no XRays of my brain – or anyone else’s brain, for that matter. I was wracking my little pea brain, and getting nothing. Finally I stopped by the library on my way home from work and picked up a Nova episode called, How Smart Can We Get?” The opening screen presented chapters, and the first one was “Einstein’s Brain”. Bingo – I finally had the start of an idea. But you might be surprised at how weird the story gets.
When Einstein died in 1955 the physician conducting the autopsy, Thomas Harvey, removed the brain – apparently without permission – and kept it for himself. He photographed the brain, and later dissected it into 240 cubes, preserved them, and stored them in a couple of large Mason jars. Harvey moved around the country a bit, and carried the jars with him, keeping them in basements and garages. When re-discovered in 1978 the jars had been in a cider box stashed under a beer cooler for years. In 2010 Harvey’s heirs finally turned the brain remnants and photographs over to the National Museum of Health and Medicine.
Dean Faulk, a neuroanthropologist who specializes in the evolution of the brain and cognition in higher primates, has made a study of 14 of the photographs. In the Nova program she explained that one very interesting feature of Einstein’s brain is the presence of an enlarged ‘knob’ that represents enlarged motor representation for the left hand. This is an unusual feature that is seen in some long-time right-handed violinists. Einstein was such a violinist.
“[W]henever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music, and that would usually resolve all his difficulties," recalled his son Hans. (www.cbcmusic.ca/posts/18221/albert-einstein-birthday-10-t...)
So, it is interesting that Einstein obviously had an amazing brain., but that his exposure to music and many years of playing the violin had a formative impact on his brain.
I conclude this very long story about “Brains” with a quote which perhaps I now understand better, from the great man himself. In speaking about the Theory of Relativity Einstein said:
“It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.”
My portrait is by Ferdinand Schmutzer [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons. The brain on the table is a screen shot from the PBS Nova program, “How Smart Can We Get?” The violin and music are mine.
And, here are some of the websites I visited in reading up on this topic:
www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/20/einsteins_brain_analysed/
phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/21/the-tragic-st...
www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/04/closer-look-einsteins-brain
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_brain
blog.oup.com/2013/01/einstein-brain-photographs/