Albert Einstein: What can you learn from a genius's strange behavior

The famous inventor and physicist Nikola Tesla gave them leg exercises every night, he constantly scratched his toes 100 times per foot, according to author Marc J Seifer. While it is not completely clear what this exercise required, Tesla himself said it helped stimulate brain cells.

The 20th century's most fertile mathematician, Paul Erdos, preferred a different kind of stimulant: amphetamines, which he used for 20-hour numbers hearings. When a friend bet $500 on it, that Erdos could not stop using it for a month, Erdos won but complained: “You have left math a month behind”

In the meantime Newton boasted about the benefits of singleness. When he died in 1727, he had permanently transformed our understanding of the natural world and left notes of over 10 million words. He was also, according to all the evidence, still a virgin (Tesla had also given up on marriage and relationships, although she later claimed to fall in love with a dove).

Many of the greatest scientific minds in the world were also extremely strange. Ever since the total ban Pythagora made on peas, naked in the air “Benjamin Franklin's”, the path to greatness has been paved with some really strange habits.

But what if these are more than mere superficial facts? Scientists are increasingly realizing that intelligence has less to do with the genetic fate that we tend to think about. According to a recent review of the evidence, about 40% of what separates super-intelligents from adults is largely environmental. Whether you like it or not, our daily habits have a powerful impact on our brain, shaping its structure and changing the way we think.

Of all the great minds of history, undoubtedly the master of the genius combination with the strange habits was Albert Einstein so he's the best person to study for clues, in behavior that stimulates our mind. He taught us how to squeeze energy out of atoms, so maybe, he'll be able to teach us one or two things about how to squeeze more, our little mortal brains. Could it be beneficial to follow Einstein's sleep, diet, and even fashion choices?

10 hours sleep and 1-sex sleep

Of all people, sleep is good for your brain and Einstein took this advice, more seriously than most people. It is said that he slept at least 10 hours a day almost once more than the average today (6.8 hours). But can you really go toward a more keen mind by sleeping?

Writer John Steinbeck once said: “is a common experience, for a difficult nighttime problem to be solved in the morning, as the sleep committee worked with it”.

Many of the most radical discoveries in human history, including the periodic table, DNA structure, and Einstein's theory of particular relativity, are supposed to have occurred while their scout was asleep. The latter reminded Einstein that the cows were being powered. But is that true?

Back in 2004, when scientists at the University of Lübeck, Germany, tested the idea with a simple experiment. First, they trained volunteers to play a number game. Most gradually learned it by practicing, but the quickest way to improve was to discover a hidden rule. When the students were tested eight hours later, those allowed to sleep more than twice as much than others were more likely to gain knowledge of the rules than those who had stayed awake.

When you fall asleep, your brain enters a series of cycles. Every 90 to20 minutes, the brain fluctuates between light sleep, deep sleep and a stage related to dreaming, known as the Fast Sy Movement (REM), which until recently was thought to play the key role in learning and memory. But that's not all. “REM has been a mystery, but we spend about 60% of the night at this type of sleep”, says Stuart Fogel, neuroscientist at the University of Otawa.

Non-sleep REM is characterized by eruptions of brain activity, so - called ladder events, because of ladder zigzags that create waves in an EEG. A normal night's sleep has thousands, each lasting no more than a few seconds. This is really the gate to the next stage of sleep the more you sleep, the more these events you will have”, he says.

The ladder events begin with an increase in electricity, which is generated by the rapid discharge of structures deep into the brain. The main actor is Talamus, an oval - shaped region operating as the brain's main center, sending sensitive signals in the right direction. While we are sleeping, this center acts as an internal plug, preventing external information to help you stay asleep. During an event of scale, the wave travels to the surface of the brain and then returns.

Intrigues is that those with higher rates tend to have more fluid intelligence so that the ability to solve new problems, use logic in new situations, and identify models that Einstein had in abundance. “They do not appear connected to other types of intelligence, such as the ability to memorize facts and images, so it is really specific for these reasoning capabilities”, Fogel says. This makes sense to Einstein's countering formal education and his councils, for “not to memorize anything you can read”.

And although the more you sleep, the more ladder events you get, this does not mean that more sleep benefits. It's like chicken and egg scenarios: some people have more ladder events because they're smart, or are they smart, because they have more ladder events? Still unknown, a recent study showed that a night's sleep in women's lives and a men's noon nap can improve their thinking skills and problem solving. More important, the rise in intelligence was linked to the presence of ladder events that occurred only during the night's sleep in women and men's lunch sleep.

It is not yet known why ladder events are beneficial, but Fogel thinks it may have something to do with the regions that are activated. “We have found that the same regions that produce the rightlymus and the cortex [brain representation] are regions that support the ability to solve problems and apply logic in new situations”, he says.

Fortunately for Einstein, he also regularly had lunches. According to apocryphal legend, to ensure that he did not overstep it, he leaned on couches with a spoon in his hand and a metal plate below. He let himself sleep a little bit then bam! The spoon struck him by his hand, and the sound of the dish was instantly awakened.

Daily Walks

Einstein was holy, his daily walks. While working at the University of Princeton, New Jersey, he took a regular two-mile walk. He followed the footsteps of other zealous pedestrians, including Darwin, who took three 45-minute walks every day.

These customs were not just for training. There is much evidence that walking can promote memory, creativity, and problem resolution. For creativity at least, walking out is even better. But why?

When you think about it, it doesn't make much sense. Walking distracts her from many other tasks, forcing her to concentrate on putting one foot ahead of the other and not falling. This is where the translated <x0... In particular, frontal lobes, which are involved in higher processes, such as memory, judgment, and language.

By lowering your activity a little bit, your brain adopts a completely different style of thinking... one that can lead to insights that do not come to you when you sit at the desk. There is no evidence of this explanation of the benefits of walking, but it is a possible idea.

Eating spaghetti

So, what do geniuses eat? Unfortunately, it is not clear what put Einstein's extraordinary mind on the move, although the internet suspect it was the spaghetti. He has once jokingly said that his favorite things from Italy were “returned and mathematician Levi-Civita”.

Although carbs have a bad reputation, Einstein was fond of them. It is known that the brain has a huge appetite for food, consuming 20% of its body energy, even though it represents only 2% of its weight. Like the rest of the body, the brain prefers to be fed by simple sugars, such as glucose, which have been dissolved by carbs. Neurons require an almost continuous supply, and they accept other energy sources only when they are really desperate. And that's the problem.

The brain has no way of storing and storing energy, so when glucose levels in the blood drop, it quickly ends. “Trup can release some of its glycogen deposits by releasing stress hormones like cortisol, but these have side effects”, says Leigh Gibson, a psychology and physiology lecturer at the University of Roehmpton.

These include the famous sense of confusion and confusion we feel when we do not have dinner. One study found that those who have low diets in carbohydrates have slower times of reaction and reduced spatial memory, although only in the short term (after a few weeks, the brain adapts to energy from other sources, such as proteins).

Sugars can give the brain a valuable push, but unfortunately that doesn't mean dipped in the spaghetti is a good idea. “Tests suggest that around 25g carbs are useful, but doubling may hinder your thinking ability”, Gibbson says.

Sludge smoke

Today, the many dangers of smoking for health are widely known, so this is not the custom to follow. But Einstein was a gathered smoker, known in a university campus as his famous theory, as well as the smoke cloud that accompanied him everywhere. Did he love smoking, and said that “contributes to a quiet and objective judgment in all human affairs”. He even took the cigarette tails off the road and added the remaining tobacco to his pipe.

Not exactly the behavior of a genius, but it should be said that although there has been evidence since the 1940 ' s, smoking has not been publicly linked to lung cancer and other diseases until 1962 50 years after the death of the famous scientist.

Today the dangers are not secret: smoking prohibits the formation of brain cells, damages the cerebral cortex (a wrinkle of the brain responsible for conscience) and depletes oxygen in the brain. It is fair to say that Einstein was awake despite this custom not because of him.

But there is a mystery. An analysis of 20,000 teenagers in the United States whose habits and health were followed for 15 years revealed that despite age, ethnic affiliation, or education, more intelligent children smoked as adults than others. Scientists still do not know why this happens, although it is not true everywhere in Great Britain, smokers tend to have lower intelligence quos.

No socks

No list of Einstein's strange habits would be complete, not to mention that he hated socks. When I was young, he wrote to his cousin, and then his wife Elsa, <x2, I discovered that my thumb always ends up making a hole in the sock. So I stopped wearing socks”. Then, when he did not find sandals, he wore Elsa's slippers. Later, there were no studies to look directly at the impact of movement without socks, but the change in casual clothing, rather than formal, is related to poor performance in abstract thinking tests.

And to close, where there's better than a scientist's own saying: “The most important thing is not to stop asking; curiosity exists for a reason”, he told LIFE in 1955.