Daniel Tammet is a mental phenomenon. He can remember 1,000 playing cards in an hour and recite them backwards and forwards. He can tell you on what day of the week a date will fall 100 years from now. He speaks nine languages. And, perhaps most intriguingly, he has a special relationship with numbers - he sees them as textured, layered landscapes in his mind. Daniel's talents are tested and explored in BRAINMAN, a one-hour special premiering Wednesday, February 23 at 8 PM (ET/PT) on The Science Channel.
Daniel is a very highly functioning savant -- one of perhaps 50 people in the world with his mental capabilities. He exhibits many of the traits of autism, with one crucial difference - he has escaped the restricted emotional and social development that autistic people suffer. His case opens up a wealth of data to researchers because Daniel is capable of describing what he is thinking - and more importantly how he is thinking. Daniel traces the changes in his brain to a series of seizures he had as a small child, a not uncommon phenomenon in people who demonstrate extraordinary mental abilities.
BRAINMAN follows Daniel across the world in a series of mental tests, from a live 5-plus hour recitation of Pi to the 22,500 decimal in Oxford (which one fascinated onlooker described as an almost religious experience); to the tables of chess hustlers in New York City, where he memorizes a board with 26 pieces in five minutes; to the black jack tables of Vegas, where Daniel's numerical intuition beats the odds; and to San Diego, where researchers at the Center for Brain Studies run him through a battery of tests. A final trial takes place on live television in Iceland, when Daniel, who is challenged to learn Icelandic in one week, converses with the hosts.
Often, prodigious mental talents such as Daniel's are associated with autism. Normally the left side of our brain, which deals with language and understanding, controls our consciousness --- however not in autistic people. Autism is a double-edged syndrome, for while autistic people often demonstrate genius-level abilities in art, music or mathematics, their gifts are also accompanied by stunted social development. Daniel is unique in that he can function 'normally' in society while at the same time thinking in extraordinary ways. The film is produced for The Science Channel by Focus Productions.
Martin Weitz is the executive producer, USA associate producer is Karen Ammond, who is also the publicist for Daniel, www.kbcmedia.com. For The Science Channel, Charlie Parsons is executive producer.
The Science Channel is part of Discovery Networks, U.S., a unit of Discovery Communications, Inc., which also operates and manages the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, the Travel Channel, Discovery Health Channel, Discovery HD Theater, Discovery Kids Channel, Discovery Times Channel, Military Channel, Discovery Home Channel, Discovery en spanol and FitTV. The unit also distributes BBC AMERICA.
To contact Daniel contact his publicist Karen Ammond - kbcmedia@att.net
