Remember Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman? Some autistic people (so called savants) can exhibit genius-like behavior and the question how this works might lead to interesting knowledge about the way we think. Two recent articles highlight this amazing phenomena:
NY Times: Savant for a Day
Weltwoche: Insel der Begabten
Especially the TMS apparatus mentioned in the first article sounds intriguing. One understanding of this phenomenon seems to be, that a normal brain has in some sense so many layers of abstractions, that basic capabilities like fast integer calculus get hidden. TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) tries to shut down some parts of your brain to magnify the capabilities of the rest (or the expose this lower layer ..). Downright scary is a mentioned military projects: Shutting down parts of the soldier's brain to increase battle performance under stressful situation or when the solider didn't get enough sleep.
Oh, and by the way, this would break Aaron Swartz's algorithm Algorithm for Determining Imagination from Reality :-)
Posted by seefeld at June 23, 2003 13:28