Channel 5

The Boy with an Amazing Brain

Channel 5 showed the most amazing programme last night, it was about a Savant, he could work out math's problems to hundred decimal places. Apparently pie was his favourite number, and it sparked some interesting brain wave results when the put in numbers that shouldn't be there.

The advantage he has over most savants is, that although he has some characteristics of being Autistic he is still able to communicate with other people. Apparently he is a scientists gold-mine in that he is able to describe to scientists how he see's numbers in his head, he describes them as a landscape, and he is able to read the landscape. Every number has a shape, and apparently when you multiply one number by another he see's 3 shapes, the one in the middle being the answer. The aim of the programme was to look at his amazing abilities to see if he is a genuine savant or if he has trained himself in someway. The final test was to learn Icelandic in a week, which is an extremely difficult language to master....and he managed it!

Part of this programme were two other savants, one who could draw the most amazing pictures at great speed, he was quite severely learning disabled/autistic, and could not communicate other than through his drawings, which were quite simply stunning.

Then there was the guy who the character Rain-Man was based upon. He was lovely, he too was quite simply amazing......funny thing was at one point he actually looked like he was reading the telephone directory! Not sure if that was a pun thrown out at the film!! Shelley pointed out this morning that he looked as if he was reading two different pages at the same time, but again the most amazing memory.....apparently he retains everything he's ever read.

They had a specialist in Savants on the programme last night and apparently there are only 50 known world wide.