Inside the mind of an autistic savant

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126881.800-inside-the-mind-of-an-autistic-savant.html?full=true

A very interesting article on how an autistic savant looks at the world around him. This is specially unique as unlike the previous cases, he can tell you how he does that. The article is an interview with Daniel Tammet. Daniel Tammet is 29 and grew up in London as the eldest of nine children. He has Asperger's syndrome, synaesthesia and had epilepsy as a child. He has taught himself French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Welsh, Estonian, Icelandic and Esperanto. He works as a writer and linguist, and runs online language courses. In 2004 he set a European record for memorising the digits of pi (22,514 digits in 5 hours and 9 minutes). His new book Embracing the Wide Sky: A tour across the horizons of the human mind is out this month by Hodder & Stoughton (UK)/Free Press (US)

What I found the most interesting is the manner in which he sees numbers and language. Eg,.

“When somebody gives me a number, I immediately visualise it and how it relates to other numbers. I also see the patterns those relationships produce and manipulate them in my head to arrive at a solution, if it's a sum, or to identify if there is a prime.”

The same applies to how he sees languages –

“When there is an overlap between how I visualise a word and its meaning, that helps me remember it. For example, if a word that means "fire" in a new language happens to appear orange to me, that will help me remember it. But more significant is my memory and ability to spot patterns and find relationships between words. Fundamentally, languages are clusters of meaning - that is what grammar is about”.

“I like the word "kellokult", which means "clock debt". It's a way of emphasising that when you are late for something, it incurs a debt, you owe someone that time. There is also "rupuaigu", which means "bread time". It's a period of time, roughly an hour, that is the time it would take for bread to bake in an oven. What I like is that it is the same for everyone in the world. It's a more intuitive way of thinking about an hour.”