Einstein's brain

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).