Aspies For Freedom

A genius explains

Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism. Interview by Richard Johnson

Daniel Tammet is talking. As he talks, he studies my shirt and counts the stitches. Ever since the age of three, when he suffered an epileptic fit, Tammet has been obsessed with counting. Now he is 26, and a mathematical genius who can figure out cube roots quicker than a calculator and recall pi to 22,514 decimal places. He also happens to be autistic, which is why he can't drive a car, wire a plug, or tell right from left. He lives with extraordinary ability and disability.

Tammet is calculating 377 multiplied by 795. Actually, he isn't "calculating": there is nothing conscious about what he is doing. He arrives at the answer instantly. Since his epileptic fit, he has been able to see numbers as shapes, colours and textures. The number two, for instance, is a motion, and five is a clap of thunder. "When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think."

Tammet is a "savant", an individual with an astonishing, extraordinary mental ability. An estimated 10% of the autistic population - and an estimated 1% of the non-autistic population - have savant abilities, but no one knows exactly why. A number of scientists now hope that Tammet might help us to understand better. Professor Allan Snyder, from the Centre for the Mind at the Australian National University in Canberra, explains why Tammet is of particular, and international, scientific interest. "Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do," says Snyder. "It just comes to them. Daniel can. He describes what he sees in his head. That's why he's exciting. He could be the Rosetta Stone."
Full story-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/...03,00.html

Good story.
I thought true savants were exceptionally rare though??? 10% and 1% seem high.

Greetings,

I think the answer as to how savant abilities work has been right under everyones noses for a while now.

Synaesthesia is cross wirign in the brain.  Epilepsy is electrical discharge in the brain.  When this happens, it is logical to conclude that areas become temporarily connected very much like a short circuit.  These conenctions could be established permanently and the person ends up with completely different wiring (I dont thing there is a person here who hasnt commented on being wired differently at some point (and used those exact words) )

Hmm - maybe if I tried this ...

  Oh shit.....

it depends on how savantism is defined.

I wonder how many aspies are 'savants'.  Don't you really, really hate it when they use the phrase 'idiot savant'?  It's so irritating when people expect autistics to always have some incredible ability.

I have been multiplying bigger numbers than this fellow and doing a lot of other numerical stuff since seven and I know how I do it but NONE of that makes him or me a mathematical genius. As for knowing Pi to 22,514 places ( why did he stop there?   that is a savant level memory but again, no proof of mathematical genius, either.

          Now Andrew Weil, the guy who finally proved Fermat's Last Theorem; there is a mathematical genius even if he needs a calculator to multiply a couple of three digit numbers. Give me a break. If this guy can multiply bigger numbers and change them into other bases instantly or do cube, seventh or nineteenth roots in his head, maybe we can meet on Main Street in Dodge City and have a aspie calculation shootout

       OTOH, David Holmes at Princeton told me of a young indian woman who could multiply eight digit numbers quickly. I have to admire that.

            
                                       Jerry Newport

This Daniel Tammet dude is really a really interesting case. He is obviously a synaesthete, seeing numbers as sounds, shapes colours and textures, that is pure syneasthesia. His synaesthesia seems to contribute towards or is accociated with his superior calculating abilities. Some people think synaesthesia aids memory in certain kinds of cognitive skills. A lot of people including myself see letters of the alphabet as being coloured. And some people do use their synaesthesic assiociations as memory aids. I would love to know if people with letter synaesthesia are better writers or spellers.

He also has left-right confusion or allochiria. When I was learning to drive a car not being able to quickly tell left from right hindered my progress, but I'm not sure how abnormal that is. At the moment I'm reading stuff written by synaesthetes, and some of them report varying degrees of allochiria, and lots of other very weird stuff.

Allochiria and lefthandedness are overrepresented in synaesthetes apparently. A lot of the odd traits associated with syneasthesia are GBG testosterone traits (autism, lefthandedness, homosexuality, dyslexia etc), and some synaesthesia traits also overlap temoral lobe epilepsy traits, but some of these TLE/syn traits also seem to be extreme female brain traits. Females are supposed to be faster at doing mental arithmetic than males, (while males excel at logic) but less good at spatial skills like reading maps, and I think allochiria is thought to be a female-type trait. Most synaesthetes are supposed to be female, in contrast with autism which is supposed to be mostly males.

I have read that the hormones of one sex can be converted into a hormone of the other sex during development in the uterus. My body shape is the same as the body shape of females who had high levels of female hormones during development. I've got to wonder if autism or syn are the result of heaps of both kinds of hormones.

       I especially hate it when my peers use the term, "idiot savant." They should know better. I am also irritated when peers act jealous of me for having abilities I never asked to have.

                              Jerry

I tend to get an odd mixture of jealousy and compliments about my abilities, the problem is I'm very bad at dealing with compliments!  Although I'm quite self absorbed, I'm not as self praising as some might imagine.

I can't get Channel 5 where I live so I shan't be able to watch the documentary about Daniel Tammet, whenever it is (the article said only "later on this year"). Anyone who does manage to watch it, keep us posted!

BTW it was Andrew Wiles, not André Weil, who proved Fermat's Last Theorem. Although André Weil did lay some of the foundations for his namesake's proof, notably the Shimura-Taniyama-Weil conjecture (every elliptic curve defined over the rational field is a factor of the Jacobian of a modular function field).

Biographical info on Andrew Wiles: http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/hist...Wiles.html
and on André Weil: http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/hist.../Weil.html