Marian Diamond, a neuroscientist who studied Albert Einstein’s brain and “literally changed the world” with groundbreaking work on rats that showed the brain’s anatomy can change with experience, has died. Diamond, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, died on 25 July in Oakland, the university said. Diamond became famous in 1984 when she examined preserved slices of Einstein’s brain and found it had more support cells than the average person’s brain. Her research on rats found that the brain can improve with enrichment, while impoverished environments can lower the capacity to learn. “Dr Diamond showed anatomically, for the first time, what we now call plasticity of the brain.

Source: The Guardian July 30, 2017 13:41 UTC