News about Daniel Tammet

Daniel Tammet has been named the world's best mental entertainer, and you don't have to be an academic whiz to understand why. His brain is a thing of wonder, able to do feats that seem almost human. He was lauded for establishing a European record for pi memorisation in 2004, reciting the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter by a staggering 22,514 digits in five hours and nine minutes.

Borrows are being encouraged to complete a questionnaire and partake in memory-based games (inset), which include recalling number sequences and patterns. Some people will be invited to Cambridge for a brain scan (pictured) so that researchers can determine if they have any similarities in structure or function, based on their results. Professor Jon Simons, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University, said, "Memory is one of the best understood psychological processes in terms of brain connections, but many people have extraordinary memories." That's why we're allowing people to participate in our research.'