One of my fondest memories from the Pi event in Oxford four years ago is the profound sense of joy I felt at that visual experience of the numbers' beauty. Using these shapes I was able to visualise and remember the digits of Pi in my mind's eye as a rolling numerical panorama, the beauty of which both fascinated and enchanted me. In fact the achievement (a European record) was the result of weeks of disciplined study that was aided by the unusual way in which my mind perceives numbers, as complex, multi-dimensional, coloured and textured shapes. When I recited the mathematical constant Pi (3.141…) from memory to 22,514 decimal places in March 2004, it seemed like magic to many people. I assumed at the time that everyone saw numbers as I did." "I learned to count, like anyone else, at a young age, and when I did I would see colors," he said. Tammet first discovered his mathematical abilities as a child, the eldest of nine children in his family in England. And there's a space that's created in between. Then you've got another number 131, which is longer a little bit like an hourglass. When asked to multiply 53 by 131, he explains the solution in shapes and textures: "Fifty-three, which is round, very round.and larger at the bottom. Tammet visualizes numbers in their unique forms and then melds them together to create a new image for the solution. Tammet doesn't need a calculator to solve exponential math problems such as 27 to the 7th power - that's 27 multiplied by itself seven times - he'll come up with the answer, 10,460,353,203, in a few seconds. But in synesthetes, the brain communicates between the regions. In most people's brains, the recognition of colors, the ability to manipulate numbers, or language capacity all work differently in separate parts, and the information is generally kept divided to prevent information overload. Synesthesia occurs when regions of the brain associated with different abilities are able to form unusual connections. For example, he says, the number fifteen is white, yellow, lumpy and round. In his mind's eye, every digit from zero to 10,000 is pictured as a 3-dimensional shape with a unique color and texture. The phenomenon is called synesthesia, a mixture of the senses that results in a heightened sensory experience. Watch the full story on 20/20 Friday, Dec. That emotion, that motion, that texture will be highly memorable for me." "Sometimes they're fast, sometimes they're slow. "The numbers are moving in my mind," he says. Tammet says he was born with the ability to experience numbers in an exceptionally vivid way. And he's a gifted linguist, speaking nine languages, including one he created called Manti. He is a mathematical genius, capable of astronomical calculations in the blink of an eye. But behind Tammet's bookish exterior lies a superhuman gift: one of the most extraordinary brains our planet has ever seen. May 28, 2010— - On the outside, 31-year-old Daniel Tammet is an unremarkable young man.
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