Mental Calculator

Mental Calculator

Mental calculators are people with a prodigious ability in some area of mental calculation, such as multiplying large numbers or factoring large numbers. Some rare mental calculators are autistic savants, with a narrow area of great skill and poor mental development in other directions, but many are people of normal mental development who have simply developed advanced calculating ability. A good many are also experienced scientists, linguists, writers, and so on.

Mental calculators were in great demand in research centers such as CERN before the advent of modern electronic calculators and computers. See, for instance, the 1983 book The Great Mental Calculators, whose introduction was written by Hans Eberstark.

The world's best mental calculators are invited every two years to compete for the Mental Calculation World Cup. On October 2nd, 2012, Naofumi Ogasawara of Japan succeeded Priyanshi Somani of India as the current world champion.

Michael O'Boyle, an American psychologist previously working in Australia and now at Texas Tech University, has recently used MRI scanning of blood flow during mental operation in mathematical prodigies to display startling results. These math prodigies show increases in blood flow to parts of the brain responsible for mathematical operations during a mental rotation task that are greater than the typical increases (see Cognitive Brain Research, October, 2005).