Poke Einstein's brain with a genius iPad app

Jacob Aron, reporter

(Image: The National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago/AP/Press Association)

Wish you could peer inside the mind of a genius? Now you can. The screenshot above is from a new iPad app developed by the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago that lets users examine digitised versions of nearly 350 slides made from slices of Albert Einstein's brain after his death in 1955.

Generally, access to the fragile slides is limited, but a study of them published in 1999 showed that Einstein's parietal lobe, the area of the brain associated with mathematics and spatial reasoning, was 15 per cent wider than in a normal brain.

Now the museum behind the app hopes that researchers will be able to study the digitised version of Einstein's brain in more detail without risk of damaging the original slides, as well giving the general public a chance to put their finger on just what made the physicist tick.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/23cd7fd8/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A120C0A90Cpoke0Eeinsteins0Ebrain0Ewith0Enew0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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