The Boy With The Incredible Brain
This is the breathtaking story of Daniel Tammet. A twenty-something with extraordinary mental abilities, Daniel is one of the world’s few savants. He can do calculations to 100 decimal places in his head, and learn a language in a week.
He also meets the world’s most famous savant, the man who inspired Dustin Hoffman’s character in the Oscar winning film ‘Rain Man’
This documentary follows Daniel as he travels to America to meet the scientists who are convinced he may hold the key to unlocking similar abilities in everyone.
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amazing documentary..
good show. i did feel a bit saddened because this boy will probably subjected to tests for a good portion of his life. it really does show how little we know about our own brains and how much potential we all have.
Pi is not 141592653582 it is 141592653589
pi r2? No, pi r round.
math it order, the highest form
A very well done documentary! A 10 from me. Fantastic! Fantastic!
I have a theory why our brains are so large and why we use such a small percentage of them currently. I believe a similar ability can be found in all of us, like Daniel Tammet under the right circumstances. It is a “seed of genius” so–to-speak, given to each of us by God Himself. Our massive mind capacity will not be fully utilized in this lifetime, however.
I feel that God has created us with a mind that is limitless because as eternal beings, we will have endless days to learn and grow and mature and understand and explore and fathom the depths of God and His creation forever. We have a virtually limitless universe, so likewise, we have a virtually limitless mind capacity to know and understand it all eventually, save perhaps the full understanding of God which will never be surpassed by any one of us ever.
Our minds will be forever learning in the age to come (with our new physical/spiritual bodies just as Christ has now). At the moment, we are just scratching the surface of our immense personal potential. I can’t wait to explore the endlessness of knowledge and wonder that God has prepared for those that love Him! I hear Jupiter is lovely this time of year. :-) I’m so excited to think about it!
I enjoyed this documentary very much. Thanks again, Vlatko!
Charles B.
I am not trying to nullify your personal Rapture, or even to
discombobulate you!
But Jupiter,s gravity, will crush you like a pineapple!
:D
The kid is figuring it out as he goes aslong, how is that genius, you see him physically writing it with his finger, genius is boom, boom, boom.
The symbols are just his own mnemonics… the dude is thinking… this is **** imo.
Learn language in a week? Define master a language?
Memorise words and familar sentences? La de da!
People are only omgod amazed at this kid because they are the ones below the par.
Btw… genius… if this kid is genius… what ingenius tasks can he complete with remembering decimal places in PI?
Whats ingenius about memory? NOTHING!
The so called “special abilities” are bs… the enchanced memory and special perception… why is it bs…?
erm hello, savants lack social skills… why… because they miss the neurological connections? lack of empathy?
It’s like a kid goes deaf, does his eyesight not improve to that of a greater precision than a person who has all use of all senses…
Its just more energy/whatever FORCED onto one or few subjects, so that subject of concentration becomes stronger and leads to imbalance… for instance that Mathmatician whom Russel Crowe played in Beautiful Mind (its late i care not to recall) who went crazy.
Doc even says in the documentary, “it’s not currently interfering with his life”
Neuro connections are hard to make, but easy to break, use it or lose it applies here!
Us “normal” people, take in information all the time from different senses and internalise it differently, savants and such just view the world in limited way!
Lets see where this kid is at in 20-40 years.
BTW Charles B; you say there is a God whilst you watch a Documentary which is blaintently set from a SCIENCE point of view… sounds to me like your extremely incongruent! (Not an attack, just pointing out your opinion is entirely flawed, you have zero idea what your talking about. and please stop trolling talking about the “God” in a science zone.)
Btw the narrators “6th sense” comment, erm lol?
“With enough practice super fast maths is possible”
Well duh!! It’s called a set of skills, a series of habits.
Overall I think this documentary is just another “all press is good press” story.
This Documentary should be called a Docudrama!
I end with my one of my recent in work quotes going off the
“there are no doubts that abilities like Daniel’s are extremely rare… the way daniel can express his own World…”
…
your life, your job, you, we could all tell a story, but few of us can, even fewer can captivate, and even less can communicate…
Peace.
Charles B.,
We do not use a small fraction of our brains. We use the whole thing. Stop bible thumping and get an education.
This is just a rather intelligent fellow who is fair at mental calculation. All of those arithmetic problems were very soft. Thousands of Chinese school children would solve them quickly. Why didn’t that ask him to factor the product of two large primes or something? I once did a stage memory act that had a segment much like the chess board memorization. Mnemonic tricks. The business about seeing the calculations as flashes of light and whatnot is pure BS, copped directly from The Teachings of Don Juan – A Yacqi Way of Knowledge, which was a hoax. The blackjack sequence was as nonsensical as the one in the movie Rain Man. And oh yeah, the real Rain Man, recently deceased, used to tell EVERYONE that someday they would be as great as he.
It is easy to say what you think! and all of the comments have their valid points of view!
i especially enjoyed reading the “Tyler Durden’s” review, although i completely disagree with most of it, it still was very sincere and exiting.
personally for me, the documentary is interesting because of persons ability to unconsciously process information. as if there is a separate and more profound existential level of consciousness that savants are in touch with. and perception of its potential is somewhat reduced by our “conscious”/”conceptual” contamination.
i may be wright or i may be wrong!
its up to you to decide…
I believe this is very normal…
is just a matter of “willingness”…
OUR BRAIN IS INCREDIBLE!
-quarantus-
Great! I wonder if these kinds of exceptions are found or could they be noticed in the animals, maybe some closly related spicies to humans, like the chimpanzees…
“This is just a rather intelligent fellow who is fair at mental calculation. All of those arithmetic problems were very soft.”
Pfft you try it then genius!
Nice doc.
i think all of us are capable be savants and beyond,the brain is multi complex
Why are “savants” so rare in that case?
I love this web page! I’m having fun.
Thanks.
I cant believe some of the ******* comments on here.
@ tyler durden who says
‘The kid is figuring it out as he goes aslong, how is that genius, you see him physically writing it with his finger, genius is boom, boom, boom.’
Have you not watched this??
Near the end the ‘scientists’ who are more qualified than you! are amazed, why? because the answer jus entered his mind, in the form of pictures which he translated into words… you really are thick boy.
you are obviously a jealous child.
@ Harley quinn
Who states that we use all of our brain…
So answer this, why do psychologists the world over state that we only use 1 percent of our mind, our potential??
And even scientists maintain that artistic people use more of their right brain and logical people use more of their left hemisphere of the brain?? Explain that??
@ Quarantus who says this Is very normal…
hmmm… doesnt explain why he is the only human on the planet that can CALCULATE WITHOUT THINKING…
Not very bright guys.
If you are going to selfisly slate someone elses hard work..
At least try to get It right,
and leave your petty egos out of the equasion.
Oh yea – sure. This guy is TOTALLY a scam artist. Once I memorized Pi 10 or 20 thousand places but then got bored and went and facebooked for 3 hours. Calculations to 100 decimal places? Chinese babies do that in between feedings. Learning a language in a week? I could probably do that IF I wanted to but the real question is WHY would I want to? – Who are you people? I*iots who can type? Amazing. Why do they allow unmoderated comments on these things, I should never be allowed to speak my mind but I’m apparently not doing as bad as I thought.
Daniel Tammet is totally amazing. This film stayed with me for days after watching it for the first time.
The form of the doc isn’t the best though, it feels too much like TV for my taste. For a better doc on a somewhat similar topic, check out “Fermat’s Last Theorem” from 1996.
people BETTER stop claiming we only use 10% of our brain. if i hear that one more time i will puke.
Let me state this very clearly:
There is no scientific evidence to suggest that we use only 10% of our brains.
In other words, the statement, “We use only 10% of our brains” is false; it’s a myth. We use all of our brain. Let’s look at the possible origins of this myth and the evidence that we use all of our brain.
Where Did the 10% Myth Begin?
The 10% statement may have been started with a misquote of Albert Einstein or the misinterpretation of the work of Pierre Flourens in the 1800s. It may have been William James who wrote in 1908: “We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources” (from The Energies of Men, p. 12).
Perhaps it was the work of Karl Lashley in the 1920s and 1930s that started it. Lashley removed large areas of the cerebral cortex in rats and found that these animals could still relearn specific tasks. We now know that destruction of even small areas of the human brain can have devastating effects on behavior. That is one reason why neurosurgeons must carefully map the brain before removing brain tissue during operations for epilepsy or brain tumors: they want to make sure that essential areas of the brain are not damaged.
Why Does the Myth Continue?
Somehow, somewhere, someone started this myth and the popular media keep on repeating this false statement (see the figures). Soon, everyone believes the statement regardless of the evidence. I have not been able to track down the exact source of this myth, and I have never seen any scientific data to support it. According to the believers of this myth, if we used more of our brain, then we could perform super memory feats and have other fantastic mental abilities – maybe we could even move objects with a single thought. Again, I do not know of any data that would support any of this.
What Does it Mean to Use Only 10% of Your Brain?
What data were used to come up with the number – 10%? Does this mean that you would be just fine if 90% of your brain was removed? If the average human brain weighs 1,400 grams (about 3 lb) and 90% of it was removed, that would leave 140 grams (about 0.3 lb) of brain tissue. That’s about the size of a sheep’s brain. It is well known that damage to a relatively small area of the brain, such as that caused by a stroke, may cause devastating disabilities. Certain neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s Disease, also affect only specific areas of the brain. The damage caused by these conditions is far less than damage to 90% of the brain.
Perhaps when people use the 10% brain statement, they mean that only one out of every ten nerve cells is essential or used at any one time? How would such a measurement be made? Even if neurons are not firing action potentials, they may still be receiving signals from other neurons.
Furthermore, from an evolutionary point of view, it is unlikely that larger brains would have developed if there was not an advantage. Certainly there are several pathways that serve similar functions. For example, there are several central pathways that are used for vision. This concept is called “redundancy” and is found throughout the nervous system. Multiple pathways for the same function may be a type of safety mechanism should one of the pathways fail. Still, functional brain imaging studies show that all parts of the brain function. Even during sleep, the brain is active. The brain is still being “used,” it is just in a different active state.
Finally, the saying “Use it or Lose It” seems to apply to the nervous system. During development many new synapses are formed. In fact, some synapses are eliminated later on in development. This period of synaptic development and elimination goes on to “fine tune” the wiring of the nervous system. Many studies have shown that if the input to a particular neural system is eliminated, then neurons in this system will not function properly. This has been shown quite dramatically in the visual system: complete loss of vision will occur if visual information is prevented from stimulating the eyes (and brain) early in development. It seems reasonable to suggest that if 90% of the brain was not used, then many neural pathways would degenerate. However, this does not seem to be the case. On the other hand, the brains of young children are quite adaptable. The function of a damaged brain area in a young brain can be taken over by remaining brain tissue. There are incredible examples of such recovery in young children who have had large portions of their brains removed to control seizures. Such miraculous recovery after extensive brain surgery is very unusual in adults.
So next time you hear someone say that they only use 10% of their brain, you can set them straight. Tell them:
“NOT TRUE; We use 100% of our brains.”
This doc was brilliant.
I was VERY impressed to have seen Ramachandran involved. He’s one of the leading neurologists and definately knows his ****. In fact, if anyone would like to learn further about synethesia and neurology in general check out his talks.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/vs_ramachandran_the_neurons_that_shaped_civilization.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html
Anyways, as mentioned this is a very promising field with a motherload of research and discovery awaiting. Seeing his ability made me feel quite envious, but also got me riled up. This appears to be the first time that scientists have come discover someone with well developed social skills who can actually work with scientists and contribute tremendously to unlocking the brain. Woot!
Recommend x infinity
damn, he is the answer to such infinity!!!
I don’t discount anything he is doing as fake , It Is real.
There Is however an explanation which very few people will even accept in the western world but It Is however true.
Perhaps It Is a gift , I’m not saying It’s not but there Is another darker side to such things, I’ll leave It at that.
To clarify , I don’t know what the case Is with this boy and other’s like him , I only know that there are cases when It’s not a gift and In those cases , It’s something that Isn’t touched upon with a 10ft pole.
some people can learn esperanto in a week.
Incredible!