One doesn’t have to look far to see that the human mind is capable of some amazing feats. Daniel Tammet, a sufferer of Autism and Asperger syndrome, has the extraordinary talent to quickly and accurately do hugely complicated sums in his head and also holds the Guinness World Record for memorising Pi accurately to 22,500 places; something which takes him just over five hours to recite in it’s entirety, without a single mistake.
Kim Peek, another Autism sufferer, was the inspiration for Dustin Hoffmans’ character in the film Rain Man, and can read an entire book in minutes, reading two pages at a time, one eye on each and has 98% recall of everything he has ever read.
While these two examples are special cases, it does prove to me that the human mind is capable of some extreme feats outside of what we would usually define as normal. The question of the limits of our minds is one I find intensely fascinating – just what are we really capable of?
