Superhuman: The Incredible Savant Brain

Superhuman the Jineredible savant brain You have three pounds of brain in your head. Most of it is just water. But what you are capable of with the rest is staggering. What we have to work with The fastest computer on earth can deliver 1.75 Petaflops while consuming 7 Megawatts of power (6300 homes). 100 billion neurons The brain has been esti- mated at 100 Petaflops and 1 quadrillion synapses using 20 watts. which can process 10 impulses per second each, Well what can we do with this? Practice makes perfect Chao Lu Focused Memory In 2005, Chao Lu memorized and recited 67,890 digits of pi without error. It took 24 hours and 4 minutes. That is one digit every 1.2 seconds, continuously. He was a 24 year old college student at the time. Ramón Campayo Speed Memory Holding most speed memory records, Ramón Campayo can memorize 17 numbers in half a second and 46 binary numbers in one second, among others. 46 binary numbers looks like this, 1101601011010101000101100101010010011110011001. These things happen Daniel Tammet Synesthesia At the age of four Tammet suffered several epileptic seizures which is believed to have created his condition. He sees numbers as shapes and colors and can do cal- culations without conscious effort. This includes cube roots to hundreds of decimal places and reciting 22,514 digits of pi in 5 hours. He speaks ten languages, becom- ing fluent in Icelandic in only one week, and is also a best selling author. Orlando Serrel Acquired Savant When he was 10 he was hit in the head with a baseball but finished the game. Now 42, he can instantly recall the day of the week, weather, and what he was doing for every date since the accident without conscious effort. He has no other savant abilities and is a janitor at WalMart. Born with it Derek Paravicini Musical Genius Born weighing 1.5 lbs, blind and autistic, he cannot tell left from right or count to ten but can play on the piano every song he has ever heard perfectly in any style (YMCA as Oscar Peterson, Für lise as Mozart). He can identify and play back 10 simultaneous notes. Kim Peek Mt. Everest of Memory Kim Peak's abilities were the basis for the character and zip code in the US could provide map-quest like directions within any major US Rain Man. He knew every area city or between them, could read two P 000 books the with each eye) in 8 seconds at once (one this way. He was not mentally with 98% accuracy, and has read over retarded or autistic, but was unable to master basic life skills. He was missing the corpus callosum which connects his brains hemispheres. So perhaps these abilities are present in us all Allan Snyder Scientist and fashion victim Allan Synder thinks so. As Director of the Center at the University of Sydney, Snyder has been bombarding the left temporal lobe of subjects with transcra- nial magnetic stimulation and unlocking savant like abilities. By shutting down part of the left hemisphere in the brain, it is able to allow the right to flourish, where participants have reported dramatically improved artistic talent as well as the ability to recognize primes and instantly count visual data, like Rain Man with match sticks. Unfortunately, the effects soon wear off but the implications are astounding. Just what are our brains capable of? 0O Smarter.org Leam something new!