Einstein's brain and enhancing our intelligence!

Albert Einstein’s brain is missing.

Or, at least it was for fifty years, until the heirs of the doctor who spirited it away shortly after his death in 1955 finally returned it to the National Museum of Health and Medicine in 2010. Analysis of his brain may help clarify these questions: What is genius? How do you measure intelligence and its relationship to success in life? There are also philosophical questions: Is genius a function of our genes, or is it more a question of personal struggle and achievement?

And, finally, Einstein’s brain may help answer the key question: Can we boost our own intelligence?

One might expect that Einstein’s brain was far beyond an ordinary human’s, that it must have been huge, perhaps with areas that were abnormally large. In fact, the opposite has been found (it is slightly smaller, not larger, than normal). Overall, Einstein’s brain is quite ordinary. If a neurologist did not know that this was Einstein’s brain, he probably would not give it a second thought.

The only differences found in Einstein’s brain were rather minor. A certain part of his brain, called the angular gyri, was larger than normal, with the inferior parietal regions of both hemispheres 15 percent wider than average. Notably, these parts of the brain are involved in abstract thought, in the manipulation of symbols such as writing and mathematics, and in visual-spatial processing. But his brain was still within the norm, so it is not clear whether the genius of Einstein lay in the organic structure of his brain or in the force of his personality, his outlook, and the times.

Perhaps Einstein himself said it best when he said, “I have no special talents.?I am only passionately curious.” In fact, Einstein would confess that he had to struggle with mathematics in his youth. To one group of schoolchildren, he once confided, “No matter what difficulties you may have with mathematics, mine were greater.”

The essence of Einstein’s genius was probably his extraordinary ability to simulate the future through thought experiments, creating new physical principles via pictures. As Einstein himself once said, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.”

But given the rapid advances taking place in the world’s laboratories concerning electromagnetic fields, genetics, and drug therapies, is it possible not just to measure our intelligence, but to enhance it as well—to become another Einstein?

It may be possible in the coming decades to use a combination of gene therapy, drugs, and magnetic devices to increase our intelligence. There are several avenues of exploration that are revealing the secrets of intelligence and how it may be modified or enhanced. Overall, our brain is plastic and is designed to rewire itself depending upon both external and internal situations.

All of us are born with certain abilities that are programmed into our genes and the structure of our brains. That is the luck of the draw. But how we arrange our thoughts and experiences and simulate the future is something that is totally within our control.

Charles Darwin himself once wrote, “I have always maintained that, excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work.”