Neuroscience
There's a good article in the New York Times about Dr. Witelson and her collection of brains:
- Specialized Neurons Of The Medial Temporal Lobe
This study has been reported in the media in a number of different locations. Today, The New York Times includes a small report about it:A Neuron With Halle Berry's Name on It By SANDRA BLAKESLEE The New York Times Published: July 5, 2005 Scientists...
- The Passionate Caudate
From tomorrow's New York Times: Watching New Love as It Sears the Brain By BENEDICT CAREY The New York Times Published: May 31, 2005 [snip] In the study, Dr. [Helen] Fisher, Dr. Lucy Brown of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and...
- Brains On Parade
Viewers of C-SPAN's BookTV were treated this weekend to a re-airing of a Brian Lamb interview from 2000 with Michael Paterniti, the author of the book Driving Mr. Albert, about his cross-country adventure with the doctor who retained portions of Albert...
- Ice Cream!
From The Guardian: How ice cream tickles your brain David Adam, science correspondent Friday, April 29, 2005 The Guardian Eating ice cream really does make you happy. Scientists have found that a spoonful of the cold stuff lights up the same pleasure...
- Bird Brains!
From tomorrow's New York Times: Minds of Their Own: Birds Gain Respect By SANDRA BLAKESLEE The New York Times Published: February 1, 2005 Birdbrain has long been a colloquial term of ridicule. The common notion is that birds' brains...
Neuroscience
Dr. Sandra F. Witelson and Einstein's Brain
There's a good article in the New York Times about Dr. Witelson and her collection of brains:
A Hands-On Approach to Studying the Brain, Even Einstein’sRead more!
By SIOBHAN ROBERTS
HAMILTON, Ontario — Standing in her vaultlike walk-in refrigerator, Sandra F. Witelson pries open a white plastic tub that looks like an ice cream container.
There, soaking in diluted formaldehyde, is a gleaming vanilla-colored brain: the curvy landscape of hills and valleys (the gyri and sulci) that channeled the thoughts of the late mathematician Donald Coxeter, known as the man who saved geometry from near extinction in the 20th century.
“His brain is amazingly plump,” Dr. Witelson says. She ought to know.
Here at McMaster University, where she is a neuroscientist with the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, Dr. Witelson has a collection of 125 brains. They are all from Canadians: business people, professionals, homemakers, and blue- and white-collar workers.
. . .
It was Dr. Witelson’s 1999 study of Albert Einstein’s brain that made headlines by revealing some remarkable features overlooked by other neuroscientists: the parietal lobe, the region responsible for visual thinking and spatial reasoning, was 15 percent larger than average, and it was structured as one distinct compartment, instead of the usual two compartments separated by the Sylvian fissure.
Dr. Witelson is continuing her analysis of Einstein’s brain, but with a histological study, probing features of the cellular geography in the parietal lobe, like the packing density of his neurons.
Jim Ross for The New York Times
- Specialized Neurons Of The Medial Temporal Lobe
This study has been reported in the media in a number of different locations. Today, The New York Times includes a small report about it:A Neuron With Halle Berry's Name on It By SANDRA BLAKESLEE The New York Times Published: July 5, 2005 Scientists...
- The Passionate Caudate
From tomorrow's New York Times: Watching New Love as It Sears the Brain By BENEDICT CAREY The New York Times Published: May 31, 2005 [snip] In the study, Dr. [Helen] Fisher, Dr. Lucy Brown of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and...
- Brains On Parade
Viewers of C-SPAN's BookTV were treated this weekend to a re-airing of a Brian Lamb interview from 2000 with Michael Paterniti, the author of the book Driving Mr. Albert, about his cross-country adventure with the doctor who retained portions of Albert...
- Ice Cream!
From The Guardian: How ice cream tickles your brain David Adam, science correspondent Friday, April 29, 2005 The Guardian Eating ice cream really does make you happy. Scientists have found that a spoonful of the cold stuff lights up the same pleasure...
- Bird Brains!
From tomorrow's New York Times: Minds of Their Own: Birds Gain Respect By SANDRA BLAKESLEE The New York Times Published: February 1, 2005 Birdbrain has long been a colloquial term of ridicule. The common notion is that birds' brains...