Einstein's brain FOUND ON APPLE iPAD

Albert Einstein's brain can now be downloaded to your trusty Apple iPad, should you own one. Sadly it's not an iOS-compatible simulation of the top physicist's mind, best known for coming up with the general theory of relativity and laying the ground work for quantum mechanics. Instead it's a selection of photos of slices of …

[Anonymous Coward]

"Solving the location of brain parts is now considered of much greater importance."

I'll get my aunty working on it, she could solve jigsaw of a polar bear knee deep in snow during a whiteout.

[Alan Denman]

Brain in a jar.

Well we all now know that Hitler's brain is in a fruit jam jar.

Its not going anywhere.

[Crisp]

Einsteins Greatest Mistake

Not transferring his brain into a killer robot when he had the chance.

[Big_Ted]

Can I just say euh......

[Anonymous Coward]

I think all his best ideas.....

....came from that little monkey face just left of centre in that image.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I think all his best ideas.....

Excellent spot, though I think it's a Lemur

[Erwin Hofmann]

Re: I think all his best ideas.....

... there must be more of these ...

[Mage]

Hmm.

Isn't this like trying to understand art by analysing the pigments?

[Winston Smith]

Next in line -

Sections taken from the brain of one Abby Normal of Transylvania.

[Michael Dunn]

One wonders: why 170?

Also clear from the section shown: This patient did not suffer from rabies.

As for this "digitising" wasn't there a $60 usb microscope eyepiece on general sale a few years ago? Just plug in and place slides on the microscope stage, and instant digital images at a few cents a time.

Of course, _my_ brain will be well pickled when I come to die.

[Dr Patrick J R Harkin]

Speaking as someone who has had occasion to dissect brains - why not 170? You need to bits to be small enough to fit on a microsocpe slide, and while neuropathologists do traditionally use bigger slides than the rest of pathology, they're still not vast.

The reassembly (as has been mentioned) is a wonderful jigsaw puzzle. If ALL the slides from each of the 170 locations are available, it should be feasible to rebuild in software each chunk. Now, I know from experience that the distortion the tissue undergoes in processing means we won't get neat pseudo-cuboid chunks, (this problem totally defeated my one research attempt at 3D reconstruction using an IBAS machine many years ago), it should be possible to assign chunks to brain areas more precisely.

The big question of whether it's worth the effort, however, needs to be addressed first! No matter how finely you slice a smartphone, you won't be able to tell which software ran on it while it was still functional...

[Colin 4]

Re: Einsteins Greatest Mistake

Presumably if he'd done that, there would also be an Android app ...