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A Genialidade "Savant"

inconscientecoletivo — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 07:00:50 +0000

O que é um savant?

Savant é um tipo de genialidade especial. Diferentemente de um gênio, que é uma pessoa muito inteligente, um savant (ou uma pessoa que possui a "Síndrome Savant") é uma pessoa que possui uma capacidade extraordinária em alguma área específica. Se você já assistiu ao filme "Rain Man" (com Tom Cruise e Dustin Hoffman) então você já pode ter uma idéia de como é um savant: o personagem de Dustin Hoffman é baseado em um. Normalmente os savants são pessoas que não conseguem viver independentemente. É claro que não todos, mas a maioria têm problemas de desenvolvimento, assemelhando-se muito a pessoas autistas. Uma pessoa pode nascer savant ou se tornar um, como resultado de lesões no cérebro. E este é o caso de Daniel Tammet. Daniel é um dos savants mais conhecidos atualmente, especialmente porque é comunicativo e consegue viver independente (o que é raro). Ele possui uma habilidade de cálculos assombrosa e uma memória assustadora: Daniel foi capaz de dizer 22.514 dígitos do número PI (número que a maioria das pessoas só lembra o 3,14...). Esta habilidade de Daniel parece ter surgido após um ataque epiléptico, que ele teve aos 4 anos de idade. Abaixo coloquei o documentário (está em Português de Portugal) que fala um pouco mais sobre Daniel e seu fantástico cérebro!

Parte 1:

Parte 2:

Conheça o desafio feito à Daniel!

La mente prodigiosa de Daniel Tammet

fanjacc — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:22:17 +0000

Danniel Tammet es un chico británico de 27 años. Su habilidad con los cálculos matemáticos y los idiomas lo convierten en un genio y uno de los 52 savants (persona con un talento excepcional en algún área de aprendizaje) vivos actualmente.

Aunque en la mayoría de estos casos tienen algún tipo de incapacidad mental o autismo, Daniel Tammet es el único completamente independiente, sin incapacidades mentales. Es capaz de hacer cálculos complejos en cuestión de segundos y memorizar el número Pi con 22.514 dígitos en una semana. Durante 5 horas lo recitó de memoria. También le llevó una semana aprender islandés.

Él mismo explica el proceso de su pensamiento diciendo que ve los números como colores y formas.

En sus memorias (“Nacido en un Día Azul”, en inglés “Born on a Blue Day”) habla de cómo la epilepsia, la sinestesia y el síndrome de Asperger (del que no fue diagnosticado hasta los 25 años) le han acompañado durante toda su infancia.

En esta página puedes ver vídeos de Daniel Tammet y su mente brillante. Aquí puedes visitar su página web.

Fuentes: Wikipedia, Maitrella y Documental “Gente Extraordinaria: Una mente privilegiada”

Born on a Blue Day: A Memoir (Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant)

nliakos — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:59:33 +0000

by Daniel Tammet (2006; Landmark Audiobooks 2007, narrated by Simon Vance)

This book is one of the most interesting books I've read recently. Daniel Tammet is a young British man with autism and savant syndrome; he is extraordinarily gifted in the areas of mathematics and languages. Unlike many (or most?) people with savant syndrome, he is verbally articulate and is able to describe, for example, how he "sees" numbers as mental landscapes having shape, color, and size; how he goes about learning (or creating) a new language (he learned enough Icelandic in a week to go on national television and be interviewed in the language!); and his experiences as a volunteer English teacher in Lithuania--his first time living away from home! What a gutsy guy. He's a real inspiration.

Here is one of several videos on YouTube about Daniel Tammet:

Ihmeelliset Aivot

Wespa — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:01:57 +0000

Englanninkielinen dokumentti.

Daniel Tammetilla on kyky nähdä laskut maisemina ja hän pystyy laskemaan vaikeita laskutoimituksia lyhyessä ajassa. Hän pystyi kertomaan mm. piin arvon 25000 numeron tarkkuudella ilman yhtään vihettä.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2351172331453380070]

Blinking Your Way Through Life

J W Kraft — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:53:13 +0000

I recently heard an episode of "Culture Shock" on the BBC in which they were interviewing a Professor Gerd Gigerenzer (I'm not making that up) about his ideas on so called, intuition. His latest book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious is on that very subject and the man is considered something of a leader in the field. What he claims to have verified through various studies is that decisions made through first reaction responses or gut reactions are often more accurate than those made through careful deliberations. This is something of a new idea though a trendy one, in 2005 another popular book, Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, was published. It had a very similar premise.

The question then comes up, is this a form of irrational decision making? If so, then the soundness of logic (and math) is bought into question. For, if accurate decisions can be made with out the use of logic, then logic may be faulty. Even if no fault is found with logic per se it could be deemed unuseful, and relegated to a novelty of history in an entirely laissez faire impulse driven society. The future imagined by H. G. Wells in The Time Machine comes to mind.

So then, after this bleak foretelling, you may expect me to be opposed to the whole blink idea. Well, I am more interested with truth, than with what lie will bring a more pleasant future. I happen to believe there is something to this whole idea, which I have taken to calling, blink, after the book. I also happen to believe it is entirely rational. (Crowds cheer: Alas, the future is saved!) But, that doesn't mean that it will be taken as rational by irrational (postmodern) people. (Crowds stare as deer in headlights: Doom and Gloom.)

I believe the human mind is far more complex than is understood, and this blink speaks to that. I also believe that humans are far more complex than is usually admitted by the experts. Every human is unique. Some may be gifted with far greater instinct than others. Some may have it in certain fields and not in others. I think it can certainly be learned. An example was given in the episode of Culture Shock, I mentioned earlier, of a veteran police officer who knew by instinct that a particular person in an airport had a gun. They could not explain how they knew this, they just had honed their instinct over many years.*

I have several reasons for believing that this instinct is rational. Let me first define what I mean by rational. I do not mean, well thought out. Obviously these gut decisions are not well thought out. I mean logical, I mean that the decision process follows a logical stream. The person making the decision does not need to be conscience of all the intricacies of that logic for it to be a logical decision. That is infact what I believe is happening, I believe that the mind is making logical decisions without the person being conscience of them. They are simply presented with the answer.

It is like a calculator. A calculator takes in data (from the user pushing the keys) and displays the answer. It does not display all the logical steps it had to go through in order to arrive at that answer, but it did go through them. I believe the mind is powerful enough to take in sensory data, in fields that the person is especially gifted in (by nature or by education) and calculate a rational and logical response without the person have to deliberate over it.

Daniel Tammet is one example of this. He was the host and one of the subjects of a Science Channel documentary called Brain Man. He is incredibly gifted in the field of mathematics. He can come up with the answers to highly complex math problems nearly instantly, and to hundreds of decimal places. He claims to not calculate the problems in his head but rather that the answers just come to him.

I have always been a logical person. Some (i.e. my mother) would say that I'm logical to a fault. So when I was a freshman (in college or at university for the Brits) I enrolled in a logic class, thinking it would be a cakewalk. When I would take the tests, I generally knew the answers; they were obvious to me. However in order to get credit for an answer you had to show your work. This I could not do, certainly not in the timeframe of one class period. I ended up dropping the class because of this. Since then I have been more aware of it and have noticed many time when I would hear an argument that I knew was invalid but I could not put my finger on just why. Often if I continued to think about it, I would see the hole in the argument a day or more later.

So is this instinct an advantage? Well, it was certainly a handicap in my logic class, but in certain instances I think it could be very useful. I think it is there to aid us in making decisions when we do not have time for careful deliberations. Think of it as a kind of mental adrenaline. It can be very useful in an emergency but you wouldn't want to be on an adrenaline high all the time. I believe the reason that the studies that Doctor Gigerenzer cited showed that blink decisions were more accurate than those that were carefully thought out is because most people rarely make rational decisions at all. One of my favorite quotes comes from Blaise Pascal,

"People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive."

This must be even more accurate today than when Pascal wrote it. The only explanation for why blink decisions are more accurate is that they are more rational. It is a sad state of affairs when this is the norm rather than the exception. So for the masses who make irrational descisions when given the chance, blink decisions are their best hope, but for a rational person, given the time, it should be thought out.

*I am not sure that it was some one with a gun, but it was along those lines.

Film: Dokumentär om autistisk savant

Redaktionen — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:21:42 +0000

The Boy with the Incredible Brain är en dokumentär om Daniel Tammet som är en så kallad autistisk savant. En person som är autistisk savant är dels autistisk och har savant syndrom som innebär att man är mentalt handikappad men har extraordinära mental förmågor inom vissa avgränsade områden.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2351172331453380070&hl=en]

Daniel Tammet

Carlos — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:29:00 +0000

Daniel Tammet sufre del síndrome de Asperger, aunque no fue diagnosticado hasta los 25 años, y como sucede en otros casos de personas con algún tipo de transtorno de la gama del autismo, manifiesta además un síndrome del sabio en forma de una especial habilidad con los números, una gran memoria, y una gran facilidad para aprender idiomas, como demuestra el hecho de que fuera capaz de aprender islandés en una semana.

Sin embargo, lo característico de Daniel es que tiene una vida normal y social muy activa. Muchos expertos señalan que este proceso de socialización le ayuda a tener una vida normal. No hay duda que el ser humano es muy complejo.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4913196365903075662]

Vía. La ventana de Abraham

Brain Man

nadekomma — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:21:50 +0000

Woensdagavond laat op de trein viel mijn oog op een foto van Jimmy Kets in de katern Uitgelezen van De Morgen. Foto trouwens van hem gekregen in ruil voor een vriendelijke merci, fijn. Deze foto, in Amsterdam gemaakt, stond bij een interview met Daniel Tammet, aka Brain Man naar aanleiding van zijn wereldwijde bestseller 'Op een blauwe dag' brain-man.pdf.

Daniel Tammet is een asperger, hoogfunctionerde autist, die op 14 maart 2004 in Oxford in 5 uur en 9 minuten 22 514 cijfers van het getal pi foutloos uit het hoofd reciteerde. De truc volgens deze Savant is om met de cijfers een landschap te vormen in je hoofd zoals je een verhaaltje bij een reeks cijfers bedenkt om die te memoriseren, maar dan op grote schaal. Verder dan een pincode en mijn geboortedatum kom ik niet... moet misschien meer cijferlandschappen bedenken.

Die avond had ik met S afgesproken om iets te gaan drinken in de buurt van het station. Blij weerzien en haar haar was ok. Anders was ze niet komen opdagen.

Video: Daniel Tammet: gay en asperger (idiot savant)

Benjamin — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 08:46:51 +0000

Daniel Tammet heeft asperger en is idiot savant, vormen van autisme. Hij is uiterst slim, maar heeft nood aan 'overdreven' structuur. Zo is hij recordhouder opnoemen van de cijfers van het getal pi (3,1415…) Tammet is toevallig ook homo. Hij woont al zes jaar samen met Neil Mitchell, die hij leerde kennen via het internet. Marnix Plancke van De Morgen sprak met de wiskundige.

Fragment uit 'Een eeuw geleden was ik op de kermis beland':
U leidt een heel normaal leven.
"Ik heb al zeven jaar een relatie met Neil en we wonen al meer dan zes jaar samen. Hij heeft zijn job en ik heb de mijne. Ik ben zelfstandige. Ik run een website die vertaalcursussen aanbiedt en schrijf mijn boeken. Aspergers zijn tot meer in staat dan algemeen gedacht wordt. Ze stuiten nog vaak op onbegrip. Dat is volgens mij de grootste reden waarom maar 12 procent van hen een job heeft. Het is niet dat ze niet kunnen werken, maar wel dat van hen verwacht wordt dat ze hetzelfde werk doen als ieder ander. Wanneer dat niet kan, vallen ze uit de boot, en dat terwijl aspergers heel betrouwbaar en standvastig zijn. Ze hebben het heel moeilijk om te liegen en wanneer je hen iets laat doen wat hen echt interesseert, leggen ze een nimmer geziene vaardigheid aan de dag. Maar helemaal zoals ieder ander zal ik nooit worden. Chaos en lawaai brengen me op de afgrond van een instorting en zonder orde en regelmaat kan ik niet leven. Iedere dag begint voor mij bijvoorbeeld met 45 gram porridge, netjes afgewogen op een elektrische weegschaal."

U bent homoseksueel. Heeft het syndroom van Asperger invloed gehad op de bewustwording van die seksuele geaardheid?
"Ik wist al op mijn elfde dat ik me aangetrokken voelde tot jongens, maar dat ik homo was, besefte ik pas veel later. Problemen heb ik daar nooit mee gehad. Als asperger ben je sowieso anders dan de anderen. Of je dan homo bent of hetero, maakt niet uit. Ik hou trouwens niet van het onderscheid dat men nog vaak maakt tussen normalen en autisten. Alle mensen zijn immers anders. Bovendien heb ik wellicht geprofiteerd van de huidige tolerantie tegenover homoseksuelen - en autisten wat dat betreft. Vroeger was het een grote stap om je te outen. Nu niet meer. Maar tegelijk vraag ik me af of zulk een stigmatisering wel enige invloed op me zou hebben gehad. Aspergers hebben immers niet het flauwste idee van wat anderen van hen denken, waardoor ze zich ook moeilijk kunnen schamen."

U hebt Neil via het internet leren kennen, het autistenmedium bij uitstek, zoals u het beschrijft.
"Internetcommunicatie is inderdaad veel eenduidiger dan een gesprek van mens tot mens. Je zit veilig achter je computer en hoeft geen oogcontact te maken. Je moet de knepen van de lichaamstaal niet beheersen en wanneer je niet lacht als er iemand tijdens het chatten een grap maakt, zal niemand dat ooit merken. Neil werkte als computerprogrammeur en zat veel op het internet. Omdat hij net als ik heel verlegen was, ging hij via het net op zoek naar vriendschap. En zo hebben we elkaar leren kennen."

Tammet schrijft ook boeken over asperger. Op een blauwe dag geboren is nu te koop.

Daniel Tammet
Op een blauwe dag geboren
Oorspronkelijke titel: Born on a Blue Day
Vertaald door Miebeth van Horn
Nieuwezijds, Amsterdam, 222 p., 19,95 euro.

Website van Tammet.

Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet

alvinology — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 00:54:59 +0000

I just finish reading this book, Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet. Daniel has severe autistic disorder, but is able to live a fully independent live, unlike most of his peers. He see numbers as shapes, colours and textures and can perform extraordinary maths in his head. He can also learn to speak a language fluently from scratch in a week. He has Savant Syndrome, an extremely rare form of Asperger's that gives him almost unimaginable mental powers, much like the Rain Man potrayed by Dustin Hoffman. Daniel is also a homsexual and a Christian.

I am not good at writing book reviews, hence I extracted a review here from Amazon.com, written by Allison which best expressed what I feel about this book:

I had only a vague notion of what autism was before reading this book -- lack of social skills, can't communicate emotions, etc. I had heard the trials and struggles that parents with autistic children have to endure, but hearing this struggles from the autistic person himself was eye-opening. He knows he's different but at the same time he's content with who he is. He understands that these same differences have made him the person he is today.

What was even more intriguing was Daniel's concept of mathematics and words (as a savant). Just reading his own visual landscape of numbers made me see math in a whole new light. It can have physical properties, it can express emotion or any other miriad of things (for Daniel, at least). Math is truly a separate language in this view. It's funny how his own unique perspective on numbers as physical shapes can click in your own mind. Somewhere, somehow, his way of thinking makes sense too. Of course it makes sense that you can multiply two numbers by creating a new shape between the other two (why didn't I ever think of it that way?). His insights (and those of other savants) into the worlds of math and language can open up whole new portals in these areas that we had never even thought of before.

This truly inspirational book extends far beyond autism and gives us all a glimpse at the human spirit, its dignity and strength, unique to every individual, but beautiful just the same.

Reading Daniel's autobiography left me awe stricken to the greatness of the human mind. There's so much we are yet to know about what we can be capable of when our brain is harnessed to its fullest.

My curiosity was piqued to find out more about Daniel Tammet after reading his autobiographer. I found some videos about him on Youtube. Here's the one where he made a guest appearance on the Late Night Show with David Letterman:

The BBC produced 60 minutes documentary, Daniel Tammet - The Boy with the Incredible Brain:

Technorati Tags: Daniel Tammet, Kim Peek, Rain man, savant, incredible brain, born on a blue day, late night show with david letterman, david letterman, BBC, pi, mathematics, numbers, allison, amazon.com, asperger's, linguist, languages

Le calculateur est prodige, pas le journaliste...

dailleurs — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 20:23:49 +0000

Toujours dans le même numéro du 5-6/08/07, dans la page "Décryptages" (p. 12) Jean-Pierre Langellier présente un jeune prodige britannique du calcul, Daniel Tammet. On y trouve quelques beaux exemples d'imprécisions ou même de bourdes :
"Il lui suffit de 28 secondes pour trouver le quotient de deux nombres, accompagné de 32 chiffres après la virgule." Fort bien, mais savoir de combien de chiffres sont composés ces deux nombres permettrait de mieux juger de la performance...
Daniel "n'aime guère l'algèbre et ses équations, encombrées de lettres mais si pauvres en chiffres" : voilà une description bizarre de cette branche des mathématiques.
"Pi est son nombre favori, le seul qui se déroule à l'infini" ajoute le journaliste, bourde assez monumentale : d'abord cela ne veut pas dire grand chose, si l'on ne précise pas que ce sont les décimales qui se "déroulent à l'infini", et ensuite il y a une infinité de nombres dans ce cas, les rationnels, comme 11 divisé par 13 où, après la virgule, on trouve, répétée à l'infini, la suite 0,6470588235294118, les nombres irrationnels comme racine de deux, où se trouve après la virgule une suite infinie de chiffres sans séquence particulière, les nombre transcendants enfin, comme Pi, cité ici, mais aussi e ou sin(1) qui présentent la mêmes caractéristique que ci-dessus et qui sont d'ailleurs… infiniment nombreux.
"Daniel a créé sa propre langue, le "Mänti"". On aurait été très intéressé à en connaître quelques principes de fonctionnement, vœu hélas non exaucé. Dommage…

What I learned... (6) [Hypocrisy]

Paul — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:47:32 +0000

I may be a hypocrite. In the short time that I've been keeping this blog, I have contradicted, or flip/flopped or undermined myself in almost everything I had originally stated! First I railed against the iPod, and then complained about getting screwned (see What I leaned... (5)) which is all but alleviated by the iPod. Next, I write a big post about not being able to leave a book unfinished, and less than a week later I leave one unfinished. Then I have a huge rant against memoirs, and, lo and behold, two of my last three books are memoirs. However, what I learned is that memoirs are a very different beast from novels. And I found while reading these two is that you really don't have to pay attention when reading a memoir. When I was reading Sacred Games I had dozens of characters to try and keep straight, any of whom could pop up and do or say something meaningful at any time. When reading the Steve Martin memoir, the only character I had to keep in mind was Steve (since almost every time he would say My Mother or My Father or My Sister for the other important characters. In Daniel Tammet's book he consistently explains who each person in his life is. So, I guess what it comes down to is that memoirs are much easier to read, and by extension, easier to pick up and put down. And in that respect, I really don't like them. I enjoyed Martin's because his career was funny and had an impact on my childhood, but in general, you won't see too many more popping up here.

What's interesting to me is that all of these changes of mind or opinion are a sign of growth for me. I said something, and then tried something else. Whether I liked the new way or not, there's nothing wrong with admitting you were right or wrong. It's funny how politicians are so fearful of changing their minds and being seen as flip-floppers. Whoever started that particular insult has pretty much condemned us to a group of leaders who can never change their minds. What a terrible display of leadership that is. How can you ever trust anyone who shows no sign of growth? So, hypocrite or open minded, you be the judge.

Daniel Tammet--Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant (2006) [updates added 6/19]

Paul — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 18:15:55 +0000

SOUNDTRACK: LCD SOUNDSYSTEM-LCD Soundsystem (2005). What's a metal/prog guy like myself listening to LCD Soundsystem for? Even though the music of this genre (techno/electronica/ whateveritscalledthesedays) is not very complex...most songs in fact repeat the same motif for the entire 5 minutes of the song, and yet, damn if it's not catchy. I tend to get excited by rave reviews of records, and there were some great reviews of the newest LCD record. I wound up getting the first one instead on the excitement of "Daft Punk is Playing in My House," a ridiculous song that's basically three notes repeated for 4 and a half minutes, but the conceit of the song, that Daft Punk is playing at his house, makes the song not only catchy, but also singable. Great good fun. Overall, this genre of music can get repetitive, which is great for the dance floor, but can get tiresome when just listening for pleasure (see the Hackers Soundtrack for an excruciatingly bland listen, and for a hilarious picture of Angelina Jolie when she was like 12 or something). But after a couple of dance floor tracks, he mixes it up a little bit with what is almost a ballad "Never as Tired as When I'm Waking Up." This is a strong collection of songs. I can't recommend it to anyone who doesn't care for this type of music, but it is very solid if you want to bop around. There's also a bonus disc of singles and B-sides. "Losing My Edge" is great, the rest are basically B sides.

[Read: June 17, 2007] Born on a Blue Day.

I read an excerpt of this book in The Week about two months ago. It sounded awesome! The basic gist of this book is that the author, a 26 year old man, has a highly functional type of autism called Asberger syndrome. In the excerpt I read, he talked about how he can't help but associate words and numbers with colors, hence, born on a "blue day." He uses this remarkable "gift" to facilitate great recollection of numbers and words, including the ability to learn foreign languages and memorize digits of pi. How interesting is that? Very! But then, you read the book.

The first chapter is basically the part of the excerpt that I read, so it is a great chapter. However, from there the author recounts his life as a child and adolescent with autism. The problem is that absolutely nothing happens. And, because of his autism, he is naturally reticent to hang out with other people. So he doesn't. In two chapters, he explains that he stayed in his room to [play with cards, stack coins, stare at the ceiling] for hours at a time. But he tells us this every few pages. I used to theorize that the most boring thing in the world is watching someone else play a video game. The second most boring thing, I've now decided, is reading about someone not interacting with other people. I don't want to sound like I was rooting for terrible things to happen to him; I'm no sadist. But it's hard to remember that he has triumphed over adversity when the only adversity seems to be that he didn't hang out with other kids--but he didn't really mind that he didn't hang out with other kids.

In fact, his childhood made me want to read the really amazing story of his parents' lives. By the time he was grown, his parents had 8 children. And, given how difficult his first two years were for them (he cried almost constantly) it is amazing that his parents wanted any more children at all. He rightly says that they are his heroes, and indeed, they are pretty amazing.

I think a great deal of the problem is his writing style. He says he does not enjoy reading fiction, and I think as a result he has not learned how to write very effectively. He spends many many pages describing events which seem like they are building to a suspenseful situation, but in which, again, nothing happens. A tumultuous first airplane ride leads to nothing eventful. A subway ride leads him to get panicky from all of the people, but he gets off the train and is fine. Now, I realize that these are HUGE events for him, and I applaud his decision to tackle these concerns, but really as narrative they are severely lacking.

I suppose that I am going to hell for these criticisms. I do acknowledge that as a person with autism, he should be applauded for all of his accomplishments, and I do applaud them. In fact, I am in awe of most of the things he has done, especially the section of teaching English in a foreign country, something that I, as a non-autistic person, would find too intimidating to do. However, it still doesn't excuse boring writing. And perhaps it's the publishers' fault for allowing the book to go to print as it did. But rather than be inspired by his accomplishments, I kept feeling underwhelmed by them. It was only after rethinking about what he did that I realized what an exceptional man he is.

So, my recommendation is to read this first chapter, skip everything until after the Falling in Love chapter, and then be amazed at his staggering accomplishments as an adult. Because if you read the whole thing, this 200 page book will feel like about 700 pages. Oh, and skip the last two pages about him becoming a Christian.

Because I feel mean about my review I want to list some of his really cool accomplishments: He and his partner created a language learning website that looks really amazing. Here it is: http://www.optimnem.co.uk/tutorials.php . He has broken the record for the memorization of the digits of pi. And, most amazingly, he learned conversational Icelandic in a week. There's also a TV show produced about him, Brainman, which sounds fantastic! So, enjoy his marvelous achievements, just be judicious when reading about them.