New Photos of Einstein's Brain

By Terri Randall
Posted 11.15.12
NOVA scienceNOW

(This video is no longer available for streaming.) Researchers who've studied Einstein's brain have long known that parts of his parietal lobe—a part of the brain involved in spatial imagination—were unusually large. But now, a collection of 14 photographs missing since 1955 have revealed that Einstein's right frontal lobe has four ridges instead of the standard-issue three, giving him more brain power. And, in an unusual twist, it turns out that the host of NOVA scienceNOW, David Pogue, shares this same trait.

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The images of Einstein's brain are published in Falk, Lepore & Noe: 2012, The cerebral cortex of Albert Einstein: a description and preliminary analysis of unpublished photographs, Brain (doi #doi:10.1093/brain/aws295) and are reproduced here with permission from the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Silver Spring, MD.

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Image credit:

(Einstein's brain): The images of Einstein's brain are published in Falk, Lepore & Noe (2012, The cerebral cortex of Albert Einstein: a description and preliminary analysis of unpublished photographs, Brain (doi #doi:10.1093/brain/aws295) and are reproduced here with permission from the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Silver Spring, MD.