Neural relativity

It was always suspected that Albert Einstein was smarter than the rest of humanity, but the discovery that he was born smarter is slightly disturbing. Most of the world8217;s constitutions are predicated on the belief that all persons are born equal. And now, here is compelling evidence that some are born more equal than others. The political correctness police shall be most miffed. No wonder the Canadian boffins who rescued Einstein8217;s brain from the obscurity of a pair of pickle jars have hastened to declare that their paper in Lancet does not prove that anatomy is destiny. As indeed it is not. The jury is still out on the validity of the brain-as-machine model. To play devil8217;s advocate, if the part of Einstein8217;s brain that dealt with group theory and indefinite integrals was so hot, how does one explain his fabled inadequacy when it came to adding up a simple grocery bill? To take the analogy further, how did the father of relativity manage to forget his own address one day 8212; a simple alphanumeric string achild could master 8212; and wander all over Princeton, lost and helpless? To take it even further, if intellectual greatness was a given in his character, why was he relentlessly mistaken for a mere gardener on the university lawns? The mechanistic model of the brain appears to be over-estimated.

The school of thought owes to Paul Broca, an otherwise inoffensive Frenchman who proved that the functions of the brain are localised. The front of the brain is good at putting its owner in a rage, which explains why prefrontal lobotomy is such a popular surgical procedure. The rear, which contains the visual centre, specialises in helping him see things in the right perspective. Broca was working in the mid-19th century, when enlightened people believed that humans were no different from steam locomotives or spinning jennies 8212; a collection of parts that could achieve great things if they were connected right. It was only natural for his disciples to extend his discovery of localised function to the theory of abrain that was no different from a computer 8212; a set of biochips8217; linked by a neural network. A brain with a better architecture was by definition superior, as surely as a Pentium III is better than a 286 kludge-box. There is some truth in the analogy, but not the whole truth.

Until a few years ago, the neuroscience community believed that intelligence was a function of brain size. Einstein8217;s brain, among others, put that theory to rest. When it was removed, it was found to weigh no more than that of a social deviant or an unsuccessful safecracker. Now, the complexity of the neural connections in Einstein8217;s brain is believed to be the secret of his intelligence. One suspects that it will not be long before a bigger, better theory comes along. The key to the mystery of intelligence lies in something that is not very clearly understood: how the brain processes information. Good architecture with rich connections is dandy, but how does it translate into superior thought? Until that is clear, there will beonly correlations to go by, and many, many theories. And somewhere out there, one suspects, God will be laughing.