After he died in 1955, Albert Einstein's brain was studied by scientists worldwide, in the hopes of gaining some clue as to how genius is built. The real breakthrough may have come in the 1980s, when Marian Diamond noticed that Einstein’s brain had more glial cells than most brains do. Stemming from the Greek for "glue", glia had been thought only as neurons weird assistants. But research shows that glia can communicate without electricity and augment the brain activity that helps your brain’s early soak-up of the world. As neurologist Douglas Fields writes, resolving the glial mystery (apparently with the help of florescent dye, a la a light stick) has also helped shine a flashlight on the difficult truth of your brain: It is because of glia and how they work, science says, that the brain you have is largely determined by what you do with it up until the age of 20. Young people, you are advised to get out those educational apps, or what have you. Older people, you can go back to staring at reddit.
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