He did not speak until he was around age seven and did poorly academically all the way through college. When he failed to get into graduate school at the age of twenty, he became a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office. But he did not give up his cerebral pursuits. Just six years later he published the first draft of his scientific Theory of Relativity, which won him the Nobel Prize ten years later.
So, what can turn the mind of a child who can’t pass the grade into a veritable, well, Einstein? The answer is neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change and grow. When Einstein’s brain was examined after he died in 1955, it appeared basically the same as everyone else’s. It was roughly the same size and shape as most brains and had the average number of brain cells. One scientist, however, discovered something uniquely different about Einstein’s brain: It possessed an enormous number of connections, or synapses, between brain cells. While at one time this could have been credited to good genes, we can now see that a great deal of Einstein’s genius was the result of the unique way he used his brain.
Einstein was passionate about music and played the piano and violin regularly. When he was stuck on a mathematical problem, he once explained, he would sit down and play music and envision the problem until the mathematical equation came to him. Put another way, listening to music (the sense of hearing) stimulated playing an instrument (physical activity), which is a right brain activity, and concentration on the equation (mental activity), which is a left brain activity. Doing so on a repetitive basis not only strengthened the electrical connections (communication) between the cells in the left and right hemispheres of Einstein’s brain, but also caused new connections to grow. Combined, they increased his brainpower. He became a genius.”Please click here to return to the home page