Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Born on a Blue Day


Daniel Tammet was born on a Wednesday. For him, Wednesdays are always blue, like the number nine or the sound of loud voices arguing. Prime numbers are smooth and round like pebbles on the beach. Numbers are his friends. Eleven is friendly, and five is loud, whereas four is both shy and quiet. Some are big while others are small. Some are beautiful while others are ugly.

When multiplying, he sees the two numbers as distinct shapes. The image changes and a third shape emerges – the correct answer. He once recited 22,514 digits of pi without error in 5 hours and 9 minutes.

He has Asperger’s syndrome, a milder form of autism. He also has savant syndrome, as the Dustin Hoffman character in the 1988 Oscar-winning movie Rain Man. His visual, emotional experience is called synaesthesia, a rare neurological mixing of the senses, which most commonly results in the ability to see alphabetical letters and/or numbers in colour.

He is rare among people with savant syndrome in that he is able to describe his experiences, which he did in the book “Born on a Blue Day”.

The phenomenon is fascinating, offering interesting insights into how the brain works, particularly in combining different sensory modalities. It boggles the mind to imagine what can be achieved if the potentials of the brain can be fully utilized. It also saddens to think that many are not utilizing their brains to think.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does this have anything to do with humanity being "fallen"?
We are way short of what and how man should be when man was first designed and created?
This might include intelligence, life span, aspirations, our closeness with the Creator?

StephenC said...

I think that's one plausible reason. On the one hand, it is a puzzle while we cannot make full use of the potential. On the other, it is so very sad that so many people do not even try to use what we can.

Anonymous said...

我也在電視看過他, 他的腦可以自動運算得出答案, 還很有語言天分.

人腦的潛能真的很難想像.

StephenC said...

I watched a TV show about him too, most likely the same one. That's why I went to buy the book.

There are other savants. But he is the only one I know so far, who can describe what happens in his mind. And that's really fascinating. I am thinking of modeling what he described in a virtual system, if I can get some funding or students to do it.

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