@Freddy & Art
Cool documentary. I’d not seen that one though I had heard of Mr. Temmet… very inspirational guy… from both a personal and research perspective.
@ jlsilicon
If you cover your Ears, your Eyes can distinguish more.
There are many studied and documented examples of this type of behaviour. Some people when asked a memory intensive question will look up to the side, some defocus their vision and stare into the distance for a few seconds, some close their eyes. Some, especially males will turn the radio off in the car when concentrating on a particularly complex piece of driving; like route tracking/ finding. Mostly a person will either freeze/ pause or slowdown their actions if they are performing a complex mental task; all these ‘shows’ are examples of us limiting the neural ‘noise/ pattern’ enabling us to focus on the question at hand. True human ‘multitasking’ is a fallacy; especially if two tasks require the use of similar brain regions. For people born with a sensory deficit ie blindness, it has been shown (I’ll find research articles) that reading brail utilizes areas of the brain normally tasked to visual spatial awareness, etc.
Edit: I’ll add my reasoning on how this works. It’s basically a miss understanding by academia of how the brain processes information. We humans love to categorize areas and give them specific names; our machines to date have been based on… one specific mechanism does one specific job. I think in the brain all cortex areas receive a combined watered down version of all sensory input from all senses. Each area does semi-specialize in recognising traits of the overall sensory pattern by extracting the relevant facets based on the qualities of the data. The location/ termination of white matter tracts supplying sensory data does effectively sway/ tune some areas towards a particular facet of the sensory stream but overall it’s an all too all connectome. So when a blind person is shown to be utilizing a visual area for tactile processing it’s not that the brain has re-directed the sensory stimulus; it’s just that the area is processing what ever is left available in the global sensory pattern.
Using this reasoning is easier to understand how Mr. Temmets savantism works. The average human will have a number understanding based on learned logic from schooling, etc. Mr Temmet is processing numbers with the help of his visual/ location (problem solution landscapes) awareness etc… he’s integrated numbers/ math into a lot more brain areas than you or I, and is able to lever/ utilise the strengths of those areas against math problems. Numbers and math are engrained into his general consciousness… his whole brain is adept at math, everything he sees, feels or experiences has an element of math.
@Lock
I prefer to not call it conscious/self-aware lol.....just call it a robot reaction like a rock falling off a hill or dishwasher. Just call us a machine robot particles reactions.
You can call it anything you like… but I think you are wrong. Consciousness and self aware are collective terms that describe a complex range of phenomenon that arise in or brains.
Simplification of a topic has its uses but not to the point where you loose the resolution of the problem space; hoping/ saying something is simple does not make it so.
