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【文章內容簡介】 more of an optional thing, Pitman says. The studies are still in their early stages, so O39。DonnellJasmin39。s apparent positive result isn39。t conclusive, though to her, it39。s absolutely real. Asked if there is any sense that she has lost any of her identity, O39。DonnellJasmin says, I have regained my identity. What was broken when I was 12 was fixed. They have given me back myself. And now the . military has taken note: Pitman recently heard from the Army that he will be receiving funding starting next summer to try the same propranolol experiment done with Magil and O39。DonnellJasmin o treat American soldiers returning from Afghanistan and IraqUnit 4 Brain ManAlmost 25 years ago, 60 Minutes introduced viewers to George Finn, whose talent was immortalized in the movie Rain Man. George has a condition known as savant syndrome, a mysterious disorder of the brain where someone has a spectacular skill, even genius, in a mind that is otherwise extremely limited.Morley Safer met another savant, Daniel Tammet, who is called Brain Man in Britain. But unlike most savants, he has no obvious mental disability, and most important to scientists, he can describe his own thought process. He may very well be a scientific Rosetta stone, a key to understanding the brain. ________________________________________Back in 1983, George Finn, blessed or obsessed with calendar calculation, could give you the day if you gave him the date.What day of the week was August 13th, 1911? Safer quizzed Finn.A Sunday, Finn replied.What day of the week was May 20th, 1921? Safer asked.Friday, Finn answered.George Finn is a savant. In more politically incorrect times he would have been called an idiot savant a mentally handicapped or autistic person whose brain somehow possesses an island of brilliance.Asked if he knew how he does it, Finn told Safer, I don39。t know, but it39。s just that, that39。s fantastic I can do that.If this all seems familiar, there?s a reason: five years after the 60 Minutes broadcast, Dustin Hoffman immortalized savants like George in the movie Rain Man.Which brings us to that other savant we mentioned: Daniel Tammet. He is an Englishman, who is a 27yearold math and memory wizard.I was born November 8th, 1931, Safer remarks.Uhhuh. That39。s a prime number. 1931. And you were born on a Sunday. And this year, your birthday will be on a Wednesday. And you39。ll be 75, Tammet tells Safer.It is estimated there are only 50 true savants living in the world today, and yet none are like Daniel. He is articulate, selfsufficient, blessed with all of the spectacular ability of a savant, but with very little of the disability. Take his math skill, for example.Asked to multiply 31 by 31 by 31 by 31, Tammet quickly and accurately responded with 923,521.And it?s not just calculating. His gift of memory is stunning. Briefly show him a long numerical sequence and he?ll recite it right back to you. And he can do it backwards, to boot.That feat is just a warmup for Daniel Tammet. He first made headlines at Oxford, when he publicly recited the endless sequence of numbers embodied by the Greek letter Pi. Pi, the numbers we use to calculate the dimensions of a circle, are usually rounded off to . But its numbers actually go on to infinity.Daniel studied the sequence a thousand numbers to a page.And I would sit and I would gorge on them. And I would just absorb hundreds and hundreds at a time, he tells Safer.It took him several weeks to prepare and then Daniel headed to Oxford, where with number crunchers checking every digit, he opened the floodgates of his extraordinary memory.Tammet says he was able to recite, in a proper order, 22,514 numbers. It took him over five hours and he did it without a single mistake.Scientists say a memory feat like this is truly extraordinary. Dr. . Ramachandran and his team at the California Center for Brain Study tested Daniel extensively after his Pi achievement.What did he make of him?I was surprised at how articulate and intelligent he was, and was able to interact socially and introspect on his ownabilities, says Dr. Ramachandran.And while that introspection is extremely rare among savants, Daniel?s ability to describe how his mind works could be invaluable to scientists studying the brain, our least understood organ.Even how you and I do 17 minus nine is a big mystery. You know, how are these little wisps of jelly in your brain doing that putation? We don39。t know that, Dr. Ramachandran explains.It may seem to defy logic, but Ramachandran believes that a savant?s genius could actually result from brain injury. One possibility is that many other parts of the brain are functioning abnormally or subnormally. And this allows the patient to allocate all his attentional resources to the one remaining part, he explains. And there39。s a lot of clinical evidence for this. Some patients have a stroke and suddenly, their artistic skills improve.That theory fits well with Daniel. At the age of four, he suffered a massive epileptic seizure. He believes that seizure contributed to his condition. Numbers were no longer simply numbers and he had developed a rare crossing of the senses known as synesthesia. I see numbers in my head as colors and shapes and textures. So when I see a long sequence, the sequence forms landscapes in my mind, Tammet explains. Every number up to 10,000, I can visualize in this way, has it39。s own color, has it39。s own shape, has it39。s own texture.For example, when Daniel says he sees Pi, he does those instant putations, he is not calculating, but says the answer simply appears to him as a landscape of colorful shapes.The shapes aren39。t static. They39。re full of color. They39。re full of texture. In a sense, they39。re full of life, he says.Asked if they?re beautiful, Tammet says, Not all of them. Some of them are ugly. 289 i