A genius explains
In this article in The Guardian an autistic savant describes the view from inside his own head. (”When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges.”)
Daniel Tammet can speak eight languages (including one he devised himself) and can calculate pi to 22,514 decimal places. And, unusually for a person with autism, he is highly articulate - he can describe the perceptions and processes that occur in his mind.
The Experts are Interested, to say the least. “It’s too early to tell, but we hope it might throw some light on why we don’t all have savant abilities.”
That sentence sends a chill up my spine, because the logical extension is: “By studying Daniel, we might learn how to enable savant abilities in the general population.”