I wonder if any of these guys were used for trading pusposes?? Maybe they are able to see the next move on a chart or something...
No... But major league baseball teams... Often hire "savants" to study opposing pitchers and signs... Because they can predict the next pitch and location with great accuracy.
ok... I have heard the mental imagery thing a few times before. What's amazing is that it's the HUMAN BRAIN who is capable of something like this. Imagine tomorrow everything walking around and being that quick. I read about a guy, he had perfect memory and read a page off a book in about 10 seconds. Think about how when we look you need to focus on something, well his brain might be able to see everything at once and then process all that information immediately.
I was able to do very limited bits of what Tammet talk's about at some point, i can certainly understand what hes saying. Not the math bit, or anything particularly usefull, but just "getting" certain information, with zero conscious thought process. Uh, i dont know what else to say about that really. I recall a kid, very autistic, maybe not so much a math whiz-but he memorized some 5000 numberplates , of passing cars, at school. Often, he wouldnt see them again for years, but when he saw the car, (still out of veiw for us to read the plate) passing by, he'd recite the plate, the car model, identifying features and the date, (often years before) he saw it last. With a speculative commentary of where he thought they might have travelled to, given the timeing and load etc. I think that was the part he was interested in. Thats full on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek "He read books, memorized them, and then placed them upside down on the shelf to show that he had finished reading them, a practice he still maintains. He reads a book in about an hour (A page of text in ten seconds, reading two pages at a time, the left page with the left eye and the right page with the right eye) and, apparently, remembers everything he has read, memorizing vast amounts of information in subjects ranging from history and literature, geography, and numbers, to sports, music, and dates. He can recall some 12,000 books from memory. Peek can also do formidable calculations in his head, a skill that serves him well in his day job, where he prepares payroll worksheets. He has worked at a day workshop for adults with disabilities since 1969." Don't you wish you could read like this! I do!!!
My wife has worked with kids with Autism for 7 years. Believe me, any "benefit" of being on the far end of the spectrum is grossly outweighed by the psychological suffering.