Brain photos reveal clues to Einstein's genius

Brainiac under the microscope … Albert Einstein's brain had extra convolutions and folds.

Albert Einstein is widely regarded as a genius, but how did he get that way? Many researchers have assumed it took a special brain to come up with the theory of relativity and other stunning insights that form the foundation of modern physics. A study of 14 newly discovered photographs of Einstein's brain, which was preserved for study after his death, concludes it was indeed unusual in many ways. But researchers still do not know exactly how the brain's extra folds and convolutions translated into Einstein's amazing abilities.

The story of Einstein's brain began in 1955 when the Nobel prize-winning physicist died in New Jersey, at 76. His son Hans Albert and executor, Otto Nathan, gave the examining pathologist Thomas Harvey, permission to preserve the brain for scientific study.

Harvey photographed and then cut it into 240 blocks, which were embedded in a resin-like substance. He cut the blocks into as many as 2000 thin sections for microscopic study, and in subsequent years distributed microscopic slides and photographs of the brain to at least 18 researchers around the world. Excepting the slides he kept for himself, no one is sure where the specimens are now.

Only six peer-reviewed publications resulted from these scattered materials. Some of these studies did find interesting features in Einstein's brain, including a greater density of neurons in some parts and a higher than usual ratio of glia (cells that help neurons to transmit nerve impulses) to neurons. Two studies of the brain's gross anatomy, including one published in 2009 by anthropologist Dean Falk of Florida State University, found that Einstein's parietal lobes - possibly linked to his remarkable ability to conceptualise physics problems - had an unusual pattern of grooves and ridges.

But the Falk study was based on only a handful of photographs that had been previously made available by Harvey, who died in 2007. In 2010, Harvey's heirs agreed to transfer all of his materials to the US Army's National Museum of Health and Medicine in Maryland. For a new study, published in the journal Brain, Falk teamed with neurologist Frederick Lepore of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, in New Jersey, and Adrianne Noe, director of the museum, to analyse 14 photographs of the whole brain that have never been made public.

The team compared Einstein's brain with those of 85 other humans already described in the scientific literature, and found that the great physicist did have something special between his ears. Although the brain, weighing 1230 grams, is average in size, several regions feature additional convolutions and folds. The regions on the left side of the brain that facilitate sensory inputs into, and motor control of, the face and tongue are much larger than normal, and his prefrontal cortex - linked to planning, focused attention and perseverance in the face of challenges - is also greatly expanded.

A neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Albert Galaburda, says that ''what's great about this paper is that it puts down … the entire anatomy of Einstein's brain in great detail''. Even so, Galaburda adds, the study raises ''very important questions for which we don't have an answer". Among them are whether Einstein started off with a special brain that predisposed him to be a great physicist, or whether doing great physics caused certain parts of his brain to expand. Einstein's genius, Galaburda says, was probably due to ''some combination of a special brain and the environment he lived in''.

Falk agrees that both nature and nurture were probably involved, pointing out that Einstein's parents were ''very nurturing'' and encouraged him to be independent and creative, not only in science but also in music, paying for piano and violin lessons. (Falk's 2009 study found that a brain region linked to musical talent was highly developed in Einstein's brain.)

''Einstein programmed his own brain,'' Falk says, adding that when the field of physics was ripe for new insights, ''he had the right brain in the right place at the right time.''