Image of the Day: Exploring Einstein's Brain

 

         

 

Now you can zoom in and explore the brain of the greates genius of the 20th century via a new cloud-based virtual microscope system for iPad app developed by the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago that lets users examine digitised versions of nearly 350 slides made from slices of Albert Einstein's brain after his death in 1955. A study of the slides published in 1999 showed that Einstein's parietal lobe, the area of the brain associated with mathematics and spatial reasoning, was 15 per cent wider than in a normal brain.

The new app offers medical researchers the opporrunity to study the digitised version of Einstein's brain without risk of damaging the original slides, as well giving the general public a view of the brain that gave us the theory of relativity and revolutionized our knowledge of the Universe.

 

          

The Daily Galaxy via The National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago

Image credit: The National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago/AP/Press Association

Comments

[z0rz]

oh histology! you make me feel all fuzzy inside!

[cheezus]

It is absolutely disgusting and dehumanizing turn a human into a gee-whiz museum side-show. Sure, if there's something to be learned from the raw science, that's fine, but you cross the line when you package it up and make an app out of it -- it serves no other purpose other than a type of marketing. This is a akin to the real human bodies exhibits which pop up. They're horrible and while I think many were fine with the idea of their bodies being used for research, I don't think any of them expected to be a freak side show.

[katesisco]

Researchers have already done a lot of this brain learning and unlearning. Taxi drivers in London were found to have larger spatial regions than average. So why is it surprising that mathematicians that use the left side of thier brain all day should show the results?
Remember the lady neurosurgeon who stroked and recovered a different person? Her right side took over and never gave the dominance up.
The lady who has a column in the sunday magazine is what she is because her father made her that way. He called a press conference before she was born to claim he would make a genius. He did; she used her genius for herself.
Richard Feynmann's father consulter his rabbi before he embarked on his baby son's education because he did not want to create a child who would have no way to gain entrance into the educational establishment.
Reviews of Stanley Milgrams experiement show it was not obedience but association that allowed abuse. San Fran U/C researchers have new paper showing phony friendliness to minorities is stressful. They suggest a together from the beginning concept.

[Remedios]

They're horrible and while I think many were fine with the idea of their bodies being used for research, I don't think any of them expected to be a freak side show.