How Einstein's Brain Was Different

We might be able to credit the theory of relativity to Albert Einstein's corpus callosum. That, as Red Orbit explains, is the bundle of nerve fibers that connects the brain's left and right hemispheres. And it turns out that Einstein had a beauty. Researchers analyzing images of his brain used a new technique to determine that Einstein's two hemispheres were "unusually well-connected," reports Nature World News. They compared his corpus callosum to those from elderly men and from 26-year-olds—Einstein's "miracle year" age when he published papers that changed modern physics. He trumped them all.

“This study, more than any other to date, really gets at the ‘inside’ of Einstein’s brain," says Florida State University researcher Dean Falk, who speculates that the well-developed connections played a big role in Einstein's intelligence. The study, published in the journal Brain and led by a scientist at East China Normal University, builds on a previous one Falk did showing other physical differences. Indeed, it's "likely that a combination of physiological factors played a part shaping the enigmatic theoretical physicist," writes James Fenner at the Guardian Express. Click to read about another study concluding that the familiar notion of people being either left-brained (logical) or right-brained (creative) logic is bogus. (More Albert Einstein stories.)