In a quest to understand more about the potential of the right brain, I often come back to individuals such as autistic savants. It is the impediment on their left brain that unveils the true potential of the right brain. We can observe the true ability of the right brain in autistic savants with their extraordinary talent, knowledge, or ability. They may be especially skilled in art, math, music, memory recall, or another subject, often performing amazing feats that leave the rest of the world breathless in wonderment.
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 Guardian
Understanding the way the autistic savant mind works has been a mystery until the arrival of Daniel Tammet. Who is Daniel Tammet? He is a high-functioning autistic savant with linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia. “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.”
Although there are other high-functioning autistic savants, Daniel Tammet has caught the attention of some of the world’s leading neuroscientists because of his ability to explain how his mind works. Scientists have called him the Rosetta Stone because they believe he could be the key to discovering how the savant’s mind works and how normal people can become savants. To observe Daniel Tammet’s abilities, you can watch the full documentary about him on The Boy with the Incredible Brain.
Daniel Tammet has also given a talk on TED
What I found interesting was the way Daniel “works out” the answers to challenging Mathematical equations in his head. In his explanation, he doesn’t “work it out”, he sees images that translate to the answer because he sees numbers with their own shape, colour and texture. When you put different numbers together in an equation, they create a new image in the centre, revealing the answer.
In my mind, numbers and words are far more than squiggles of ink on a page. They have form, color, texture and so on. They come alive to me, which is why as a young child I thought of them as my “friends.” I think this is why my memory is very deep, because the information is not static. I say in my book that I do not crunch numbers (like a computer). Rather, I dance with them.
Daniel Tammet, Scientific American
Daniel Tammet’s explanation sounds similar to a right brain explanation of Maths. An explanation from TweedleWink discusses how children perceive colours as having different textures and hence were able to figure out the hidden colour through touch alone. If colours have different textures to differentiate them, then why not numbers with different colours and shapes?
In Shichida’s research on brain development, he suggests that we all possess the genius ability we observe in autistic savants but are simply unable to access it. Shichida believes that we can unlock this hidden potential with right brain training and that it is easiest when it begins as early in life as possible.
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