john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Einstein's brain

Wed, 2010-06-02 11:50 -- John Hawks

NPR did a story this week on the "mysteries unlocked" by Einstein's brain. Everybody loves to write about Einstein's brain, it's such an easy way to create a carnival atmosphere for your story:

"He brought out his bags," Paterniti says, "and in one bag he had a Tupperware container in which he had stashed the brain."

The story goes on to describe the study of tissue samples for glial density, as a lead-in to the hypothesis that chemical communication among glial cells is important to certain brain functions.

I linked to a related story back in the early days of the blog ("Deep, dark secrets of his and her brains"), which mentioned Einstein's brain as part of a tale about neuron density in male and female brains. A short history of Einstein brain research can be found in a paper by Dean Falk (free from PubMed).

Tags: 

Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.