Brain Man: The Boy With The Incredible Brain | Super Genius Documentary
An extraordinary documentary on the brainpower of Daniel T, the young Englishman who could be the world’s greatest mental athlete. Daniel is not just a calculating wizard, but also a memory champion and super linguist.
He speaks nine languages. Daniel, the oldest of seven children, has been able to do amazing calculations after an epileptic fit when he was 3 years old. He was even able to remember over 22,000 numbers in a public display of his ability.
But how does he do it? Leading scientists explore the extraordinary world of this real-life Rainman. Daniel’s psychological makeup is explored by Cambridge University autism expert Professor Simon Baron Cohen who delves into his childhood experiences in an effort to explain his remarkable abilities.
In America, Daniel meets other extraordinary people like himself, known as “savants” — including Kim Peek, whose story was the basis of the movie “Rainman”.
Brain scientists at the Salk Institute in San Diego, including Professor V S Ramachandra, are astounded at his skills and discover the key to Daniel’s ability is his visual imagery which his brain “sees” when he hears a number, this condition is known as synaesthesia.
To show it is not just numbers that Daniel can remember — he also learns one of the world’s hardest languages, Icelandic, in just one week — and gets interviewed on Icelandic TV after only 7 days of learning to speak it.
===
===
Daniel’s Website
http://danieltammet.net/
| Daniel Tammet Fellow Royal Society of Arts | |
|---|---|
| Born | Daniel Paul Corney 31 January 1979 Barking, London, England |
| Occupation | Essayist Memoirist Novelist |
| Alma mater | Open University |
| Period | 2006–present |
| Subject | Memoir Essays |
| Notable works | Born on a Blue Day (2006) |
| Spouse | Jérôme Tabet |
Tammet was born Daniel Paul Corney, the eldest of nine children, and raised in Barking and Dagenham, East London. As a young child, he had epileptic seizures, which were remitted following medical treatment.
He participated twice in the World Memory Championships in London under his birth name, placing 11th in 1999 and 4th in 2000.
At age twenty-five, he was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome by Simon Baron-Cohen of the University of Cambridge Autism Research Centre. He is one of fewer than a hundred “prodigious savants” according to Darold Treffert, the world’s leading researcher in the study of savant syndrome.
He was the subject of a documentary film titled Extraordinary People: The Boy with the Incredible Brain, first broadcast on Channel 4 on 23 May 2005.
He met software engineer Neil Mitchell in 2000, and they started a relationship. They lived in Kent. He and Mitchell operated the online e-learning company Optimnem, where they created and published language courses.
In 2016, it was reported that “Tammet lives in Paris, with his husband Jérôme Tabet, a photographer whom he met while promoting his autobiography”.
Tammet is a graduate of the Open University with a Bachelor of Arts degree with first-class honours in the humanities.
Daniel changed his birth name by deed poll because “it didn’t fit with the way he saw himself.” He took the Estonian surname Tammet, which is related to “oak trees”.
===
