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. 

Richard Johnson  |  The Guardian - February 2005

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... READ MORE >>

Nobody Knows Anything: Autism Edition

The novelist and screenwriter William Goldman famously wrote that until a movie opens, "nobody knows anything" about how well it will do at the box office.

This quotation came to mind as I read two recent stories about possible causes of autism in the New York Times. The first, published on the front page Aug. 23, reported on a study that suggested the older a man is when he becomes a father, the more likely his child is to have autism.

Three days later, on the front page of its Sunday Review section, the Times published an article by Moises Velasquez-Manoff that declared autism is an inflammatory disease caused by a faulty immune system. Theorizing that the lack of parasites in the developed world has thrown the human immune system out of whack, Velasquez-Manoff suggests that autism has become more common because the parasites that used to limit inflammation no longer regulate our immune systems. He approvingly mentions a new trial in which autistic adults are being treated withtrichuris suis, a type of worm meant to help put the immune system back in balance.

My point in bringing up Goldman's "nobody knows anything" quote is not necessarily to criticize... MORE >>