Have you ever wondered about the true potential of your brain? I’m sure you’ve heard of people who significantly developed parts of their brain to compensate for senses they lost or never developed. Consider Ben Underwood, The Boy Who Sees With Sound, AKA The Sonar Boy. He lost both eyes to retinoblastoma, an eye cancer at age 3. At age 7 he realized he could make clicking noises, listen for the echoes, and sense objects around him. He learned to use this echolocation to play basketball, rollerblade, ride a bicycle, and a host of other activities. Unfortunately he died at age 16.
But do you think you could learn to navigate that way? You could, although maybe not as well as Ben. Brain plasticity allows us to develop our brains to better accomplish certain tasks.
And what about Einstein? Do you think you could learn to think like Einstein? We know him as a brilliant scientist. His brain structure was a bit different from the rest of us.
Einstein had unusually large and strangely shaped inferior parietal lobes. Usually the brain has a large cleave through the middle of this structure called the Sylvian Fissure. Interestingly, Einstein’s veered upwards and didn’t completely divide the lobes. His were also symmetrical, whereas most of the time the left side is smaller.
The parietal lobe allows you to interpret sensory information. It makes sense that Einstein had such an understanding of the relationship between time and movement, right? He said he came up with his theory of special relativity by imagining himself travelling on a beam of light and looking back at the world around him.
Einstein’s brain also had a thicker than usual corpus callosum. That’s the structure that joins the left and right brain hemispheres. This would allow different brain areas to communicate more effectively, resulting in greater whole brain connectivity, (which we know to be an important predictor of general intelligence). It also follows that Einstein was ambidextrous.
But what else have we learned about Einstein? He was probably dyslexic and some say he didn’t start speaking until the age of four. Sometimes people’s brains are extremely specialized and developed in particular ways.
The take-home message is that you could theoretically learn to think like Einstein. First by increasing your plasticity, then by practicing visualization and navigation to grow your inferior parietal lobes, and perhaps by practicing ambidexterity to grow the corpus callosum.
But as great as Einstein was, don’t seek to emulate Einstein. Instead, focus on becoming the very best version of you.
