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Brain Advance Access originally published online on January 8, 2008
Brain 2008 131(2):583-590; doi:10.1093/brain/awm326
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Famous Russian brains: historical attempts to understand intelligence

Alla A. Vein and Marion L. C. Maat-Schieman

Department of Neurology, Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands

Correspondence to: Alla A. Vein, MD, PhD, Department of Neurology, Leiden University Medical Center, Albinusdreef 2, 2300 RC Leiden, The Netherlands. E-mail: a.a.vein{at}lumc.nl

Russian scientists are certainly among those who contributed actively to the search for the neuroanatomical basis of exceptional mental capacity and talent. Research into brain anatomy was one of the topics of special interest in various Russian universities. A number of independent reports on the study of famous Russian brains appeared both in Russia and abroad. Collecting and mapping brains of elite Russians in a structured manner began in Moscow in 1924 with the brain of V. I. Lenin. In 1928, the Moscow Brain Research Institute was founded, the collection of which includes the brains of several prominent Russian neuroscientists, including V. M. Bekhterev, G. I. Rossolimo, L. S. Vygotsky and I. P. Pavlov. The fact that the brain of two of the most outstanding scholars of Russian neurology and psychiatry, A. Ya. Kozhevnikov (1836–1902) and S. S. Korsakov (1854–1900), have been studied is largely unknown. A report of the results of this study was published by A. A. Kaputsin in 1925 providing a detailed neuroanatomical assessment of the brains. A considerable weight, a predominance of the left hemisphere and a particularly complex convolution of the frontal and parietal lobes of both brains were reported, the assumption being that these brain parameters can serve as an indicator of mental capacity. The names Kozhevnikov and Korsakov are among those most cherished by Russian neuroscientists; they are also familiar to Western colleagues. The (re)discovery of the records of the brain autopsies is meaningful, maybe not so much from a neuroanatomical point of view as from a historical perspective.

Key Words: neuroanatomy; elite brains; intelligence; Russia

Abbreviations: GI, gyrification index

Received August 3, 2007. Revised December 4, 2007. Accepted December 13, 2007.


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