illuminating science

Slashdot is reporting on a fascinating article in the Guardian about an autistic savant who is able to explain his unique abilities. Autism is any of a spectrum of disorders - the symptoms and their degrees can vary greatly from person to person. One unusual component is that some people with autism, while having below-average abilities in some areas, have incredible mental abilities in others, such as mathematics, music or art. From the article:

Autistic savants have displayed a wide range of talents, from reciting all nine volumes of Grove’s Dictionary Of Music to measuring exact distances with the naked eye. The blind American savant Leslie Lemke played Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No1, after he heard it for the first time, and he never had so much as a piano lesson. And the British savant Stephen Wiltshire was able to draw a highly accurate map of the London skyline from memory after a single helicopter trip over the city.

The man in the article, Daniel Tammet, can speak 7 languages, including one he designed himself, and perform calculations faster than a calculator. What’s of interest to researchers is that most savants are unable to explain exactly how they’re able to perform their calculations so quickly. Tammet, however, explains that he sees numbers as shapes, sounds and textures, and when he multiplies two numbers, their shapes merge and change into a new shape - which is the answer! I guess the hope is that by studying his techniques, we might learn ways to improve our own thinking, or even better understand how the brain functions.