on ‘Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind’
Written on February 4, 2009
Daniel Tammet provides a window into the mind of an autistic savant in Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind, while stressing the continuities between savant and non-savant mental abilities.
He suggests that savant abilities might be the result of “cross-talk” or hyperconnectivity between regions of the brain that are ordinarily inhibited from communicating:
Various scientists have speculated on the possibility that a range of neurological conditions, from autism and epilepsy to schizophrenia, might be related to reduced levels of inhibition in the brain, causing abnormal cross-communication between usually separate brain regions. Cognitive scientist Ed Hubbard has argued that such activity within the brain might also account for the multisensory experience of synesthesia. Reduced levels of inhibition in the brain may also play a role in savant abilities: the savant Kim Peek was born without the corpus callosum – the thick band of tissues that connects the left and right hemispheres, and which also serves as the main inhibitory pathway in the brain. …. Specifically I believe that my numerical abilities are linked to activity in the region of my brain responsible for syntactical organization. (p. 138-139)
Tammet goes on to describe the “languageness” of his numerical abilities, for example:
Just as it would be impossible to talk about the word “giraffe” without words like “neck” or “tall,” so it is impossible for me to talk meaningfully about the number 23 without referring to such relations as 529 or 989. (p. 141)
He also relates this hyperconnectivity to creativity in Chapter 6.
Unfortunately the book has no notes and the bibliography is incomplete, so there are no sources given for many of the researchers cited in the book. For example there is a quote from Peter Slezak on p. 137-138 with no reference under that name in the bibliography. (I located the source, an “All in the Mind” radio program from 22 Oct 2005.)
Coincidentally, Embracing the Wide Sky was featured in today’s VSL:Science post.
A previous post on this book has some related links.
Filed in: cognitive science,mind.
