I just found a french/german documentary about the human brain that I watched quite a long time ago.

I am still so impressed by what I just saw, although I learned a lot about neurology since I watched it for the first time.

Even though it's German you'll be astonished by that guy that solves the equation 62/167 = X.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj4-QbTpPO4

Just watch the first minute.

What. The. FUNK?!

Thats impressive - could you sum up how the hell he did it? meine Deutsch ist nicht so gut!

Quote from Jakg :

What. The. FUNK?!

That's impressive - could you sum up how the hell he did it? meine Deutsch ist nicht so gut!

Well he obviously calculates first and then verbally "prints" the result.
He speaks faster the further he comes, but it seems like he doesn't memorize the single numbers, they are more kind of "appearing" in front of his "mental eyes".

The theory is that he trained a part of his secondary cortex to be a dedicated calculator.

i just found it really wierd how he could speak faster than most people could if they were just reading the answer of a bit of paper.

Yes that's exactly the point. He is not really reading those numbers.
You could compare it to whistling a tune, or playing a song on the piano.

I just wrote a paragraph and erased it again, because of the language barrier. My English is certainly good enough to buy chips&fish in Brighton but not to explain neural architecture in a precise adequate way.
Nevertheless I'll try to answer with analogies at my best.

Quote from RedQuad :

My English is certainly good enough to buy chips&fish in Brighton

fish&chips

Holy Thread revival,Batman!

Quote from anbiddulph :

fish&chips

technically fish and chips, but if he was to walk into a chippie and ask for a fish&chip in a German accent he would get what he wanted - if it were me in a German shop i'd say "Hallo, ich mochte zwei kalte eis, bitte" and end up with 2 nice cold Eggs.

The english variant would be Daniel Tammet I guess
Now he does amazing things!

Quote from Jakg :

technically fish and chips, but if he was to walk into a chippie and ask for a fish&chip in a German accent he would get what he wanted - if it were me in a German shop i'd say "Hallo, ich mochte zwei kalte eis, bitte" and end up with 2 nice cold Eggs.

Nah, I think you would get ice creams
(note: "Eis"=ice; "Ei"=egg; "Eier"=plural form of "Ei")

Oh, because i made the same mistake on a german exam, the shop sold "Kalte eis" and i thought they were selling a nice cold egg :X

Quote from Jakg :

Oh, because i made the same mistake on a german exam, the shop sold "Kalte eis" and i thought they were selling a nice cold egg :X

LOL

german can be hard eh? hehe

Holy crap, thats awesome, I don't understand a thing but looks really impressive

Quote from Jakg :

Oh, because i made the same mistake on a german exam, the shop sold "Kalte eis" and i thought they were selling a nice cold egg :X

in that case id complain about the german skills of your teacher
kaltes eis ... certainly never heard that one in any shop round here ... maybe further up north where they think this http://www.marions-kochbuch.de/index-bilder/bratwurst.jpg is a bratwurst and that warm ice cream is some kind of italian delicacy