爱因斯坦胼胝体研究新发现受全球媒体关注

　　以我校物理系无线电物理专业博士研究生门卫伟为第一作者、范明霞为通讯作者的论文“The corpus callosum of Albert Einstein's brain: another clue to his high intelligence?”发表在神经科学领域权威期刊BRAIN（IF：9.915）杂志上，揭示了爱因斯坦大脑胼胝体与常人不同之处。 该研究成果以其特有的学术价值和新闻价值吸引了全球各大媒体的关注。

　　据不完全统计，美国华盛顿邮报(The Washington Post)、洛杉矶时报(Los Angeles Times)、 科学快讯(ScienceShot)、五角邮报(Pentagon Post)、美国公共广播网(PBS)；英国泰晤士报(The Times)、每日电讯报(The Telegraph)、英国独立报(The Independent)等媒体对这一研究成果进行报道，部分媒体对我校博士研究生门卫伟及其主要合作者美国佛罗里达大学人类学家Dean Falk教授进行了专访。

　　以下引用的是《华盛顿邮报》（The Washington Post）报道：

Einstein’s brain a wonder of connectedness

By Melissa Healy, Published: October 13

Albert Einstein   had a colossal corpus callosum. And when it comes to this particular   piece of neural real estate, it’s pretty clear that size matters.

The corpus   callosum carries electrical signals between the brain’s right hemisphere   and its left. Stretching nearly the full length of the brain from   behind the forehead to the nape of the neck, the corpus callosum is the   dense network of neural fibers that make brain regions with very   different functions work together.

Chances   are, that brawny bundle of white matter cleaving the Swiss physicist’s   brain from front to back is part of what made Einstein’s mind so   phenomenally creative, according to researchers who have been studying   the organ of the man whose name has become synonymous with genius.

When the corpus   callosum works well, the human brain is a marvel of social, spatial  and  verbal reasoning. When it malfunctions — as it appears to do in  autism,  fetal alcohol syndrome and certain genetic disorders, as well  as after  traumatic brain injury — the effect on cognition can be  disastrous.

Even when he   died at the age of 76, Einstein’s corpus callosum was a veritable   superhighway of connectivity, researchers reported last week in the   journal Brain. Not only was it “thicker in the vast majority of   subregions” than the corpus collosi of 15 elderly healthy males; it was   also thicker at five key crossings than those of 52 young, healthy men   in the prime of their lives.

Upon Einstein’s   death of an aortic aneurysm in 1955, his heirs approved the removal of   his brain for scientific study. A trove of histological slides was  made,  each a minute slice of the universe that lay beneath that shock  of  white hair. While some of those slides are housed at Princeton   University, where Einstein spent his final years, and at the National   Museum of Health and Medicine in the Washington region, many have been   lost or stolen. Without a full picture of Einstein’s brain, the basis of   the theoretical physicist’s genius has eluded scientists.

The photographs   that form the basis of the new study unexpectedly came to light in   2010. That’s when Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist   Dean Falk began making inquiries about some images of Einstein’s brain   she had seen in an earlier publication.

The photos,   along with some slides and letters, were found among the effects left   behind by Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who had removed Einstein’s   brain. Harvey’s heirs went on to donate those to the National Museum of   Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Md.

Soon after,   Falk was contacted by Weiwei Men, a physicist from East China Normal   University who had a special interest in the brain and was an ardent   admirer of Einstein.

Men had   developed a technique for measuring the thickness of the corpus callosum   in Chinese table tennis players, whose sport requires remarkable feats   of inter-hemispheric coordination. He had heard that the trove of  images  included cross-sectional views of the physicist’s corpus  callosum and  approached Falk to collaborate on a study.

Last year, the   two researchers were co-authors of a report that offered a remarkably   detailed look at the organ’s surface. The brain’s extra folds showed   evidence of unusual volume in a number of regions likely to have been   key to Einstein’s spatial and mathematical creativity.

The   high-resolution photos even revealed evidence of Einstein’s lifelong   love of playing the violin — a large “knob” on the surface of the   primary motor cortex, where the left hand is usually represented.

Their latest   analysis is based on several of these same photographs, which showed the   right hemisphere separated from the left. Those pictures revealed the   corpus callosum with great resolution and accuracy.

The researchers   were particularly impressed by the relative brawn of Einstein’s corpus   callosum at the splenium. That’s a region that facilitates  communication  among the parietal, temporal and occipital lobes. (The  parietal and  occipital lobes, in particular, are key to imagining and  manipulating  visuospatial information and images and to conducting  mathematical  operations.) The splenium also keeps those regions in  touch with the  brain’s intellectual command center, the prefrontal  cortex.

Earlier studies   of Einstein’s brain found some regions, notably the prefrontal cortex   and the parietal lobes, were just plain bigger than those of normal   people. But, the authors wrote, “Our findings suggest that Einstein’s   extraordinary cognition was related not only to his unique cortical   structure and cytoarchitectonics, but also involved enhanced   communications routes between at least some parts of his two cerebral   hemispheres.”

The new report   underscores that the ways in which we use our brains — and the   consistency with which we do so — may matter more as we age, said Peter   U. Tse, a Dartmouth College neuroscientist who has explored the   underpinnings of artistic, scientific and mathematical creativity. Tse   noted that, while Einstein’s brain was much better connected than those   of similarly aged men, it was not so different than those of young and   healthy controls.

That might   reflect the fact that Einstein continued to exercise his brain   strenuously, forestalling much of the atrophy that comes with age.