O desejo de Eistein quando morresse é que seu corpo fosse cremado e seu cérebro doado para estudos de pesquisa. Quando morreu, aos 76 anos em 1955, Dr. Thomas S. Harvey, um patologista no Princeton Hospital, removeu o cérebro de Einstein. Durante muitos anos permaneceu um mistério sobre o que fizeram com o cérebro daquele que transformou nosso entendimento sobre quase tudo na natureza. Somente trinta  anos após sua morte, é que os cientistas estão começando a entendê-lo.

Por que o cérebro de Einstein foi tão superior?

No  paper  "On the Brain of a Scientist: Albert Einstein"(1), publicado em 1985,  os cientistas contaram o número de neurônios e células gliais em quatro áreas do cérebro de Einstein: a área 9 e área 39 do córtex cerebral no henisfério direito e esquerdo. A área 9 é localizada no lobo frontal (córtex pré-frontal) e é aceita como uma importante região para o planejamento do comportamento, atenção e memória. A área 39 está localizsda no lobo parietal e é parte do córtex de associação. Acredita-se que a área 39 esteja envolvida com a linguagem e várias outras funções complexas. As concentrações de neurônios à células gliais no cérebro de Einstein foram comparadas com as dos cérebros de 11 homens que morreram na faixa de 64 anos. Os neurônios das células gliais do cérebro de Einsteins foram ....
 

Compared to the brains of the 11 normal men, the ratios of neurons to glial cells in Einstein’s brain were
             smaller in all four areas studied. However, when the numbers were examined more closely with statistics,
             only one area showed a difference - the ratio in the left area 39. So in the left area 39, Einstein’s brain had
             fewer neurons to glial cells than the normal brains. In other words, there were more glial cells for every
             neuron in Einstein’s brain.
 
 

           The Conclusion

           The authors concluded that the greater number of glial cells per neuron might indicate the neurons in
           Einstein’s brain had an increased "metabolic need" - they needed and used more energy. In this way, perhaps
           Einstein had better thinking abilities and conceptual skills.
 

 
              The Problems

A parte matemática de seu cérebro era bem maior que a nossa

              His brain was different, says Dr. Sandra Witelson, the McMaster University neuroscientist who will report her findings tomorrow in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet.

Simply put, the math part of his brain was, well, bigger than in the rest of us.  ``This indicates that there may be an anatomical basis for differences in intelligence,'' said Witelson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural neurosciences at McMaster's faculty of health sciences.

 ``But,'' she stressed, ``it shouldn't be seen as anatomy is destiny. We also know that environment has a very important role to play in learning and brain development.

``This is telling us that environment isn't the only factor.''

   Einstein, who died in 1955 at age 76, turned the ``accepted'' world of scientific knowledge upside down during the two
 decades, beginning in 1905, when he formulated his most  important theories.

But, just as every Western schoolchild knows his famous equation, E=mc (energy equals mass times the velocity of light  squared), just about everyone who has ever come across his genius wonders how he got to be that way.

 Now, with Witelson's findings, scientists may finally begin clueing in on Einstein's unique abilities.

Working with a quarter of the scientist's brain - provided to her by the pathologist who autopsied Einstein at a small hospital in Princeton, N.J. - Witelson determined that, over-all, Einstein's brain had the same weight and many of the same measurements as other men.

That, she said, confirmed the belief of many scientists that focusing on over-all brain size as an indicator of
intelligence is  really no way to go.

 Instead, she found that the part of the brain believed to be related to mathematical reasoning - the inferior parietal
region - was 15 per cent wider on both sides than normal.

              ``Visual-spatial thinking and mathematical reasoning are
              strongly dependent on this region,'' Witelson said, adding the
              unusual anatomy of Einstein's brain may explain why he tackled
              scientific problems the way he did.

              Einstein himself had another way of describing his thought
              processes.

              ``Words do not seem to play any role,'' he once said, describing
              the ``associative play'' of ``more or less clear images'' of a
              ``visual and muscular type.''

              And Witelson found something else.

              Einstein's brain, she discovered, lacks a normal groove -
called a
              sulcus - found in the rest of us.

              Working with McMaster's unique, 20-year-old brain bank - a
              collection of preserved brains - Witelson compared Einstein's
              brain with the preserved organs of 35 men and 56 women
              known to have normal intelligence when they died, and found
              the unique difference.

              ``We looked at all regions of the brain,'' Witelson said, ``but
              speculated that it might be the inferior parietal region,''
the top
              of the brain she defined as ``the part covered by a hat.

              ``It's there where the kinds of cognitive processes are that are
              involved in the work that Einstein did in the theory of
              relativity.''

              The sulcus that runs from the front of the brain to the back in
              most of the rest of us didn't go all the way in Einstein's
brain,
              Witelson found.

              ``In Einstein's brain, this fissure took a different course,
and it
              ended up turning up close to the front of the brain, so it
did not
              go into that parietal region,'' she noted.

              ``This is such a major difference that it suggests that the
              development of Einstein's brain was unusual . . . some genetic
              information, something that resulted sort of in an orchestration
              of the way the brain was developing and put itself together,
              was very atypical.''

              Witelson and the researchers working with her speculate that
              the absence of the groove may have allowed more neurons in
              this area to establish connections between each other and work
              together more easily.

              An immediate application of her work, Witelson said, may be
              new hope for researchers in search of answers for diseases that
              afflict the brain.

              With more information on the anatomical basis of different
              levels of ability, she noted, the research could eventually help
              individuals with difficulties, including developmental problems
              and dyslexia.

              Witelson literally lucked into the research - until now,
scientists
              were limited to working with tiny fragments of Einstein's
brain -
              after Harvey, the Princeton pathologist who autopsied
              Einstein's brain, made contact with her after reading about her
              work and invited her to study the organ.

              ``He had everything, he had the whole brain, he had the files
              and everything,'' Witelson recalled.

              ``He came up, he brought the brain, he brought all his files, he
              spent several weeks here, more than once, and that's how we
              got to do it.''
 
 

Referência
Marian C. Diamond, Arnold B. Scheibel, Greer M. Murphy and Thomas Harvey - On the Brain of a Scientist: Albert Einstein" 1985 Journal Experimental Neurology (vol. 88, pages 198-204, 1985)