"Chinese Rain Man" Confirmed to Possess Extraordinary Mental Arithmetic Abilities After Testing

After two days of testing, Zhou Wei's mental arithmetic abilities were indeed beyond those of ordinary people, and he was not simply memorizing answers.

Recently, Zhou Wei, known as the "Chinese Rain Man," became the focus of public attention. Diagnosed with "moderate intellectual disability," he calculated 6 to the 13th power and the 14th root of a 16-digit number in less than a minute on the TV show "The Brain," winning applause and tears from the audience. Doubts followed one after another—Fang Zhouzi wrote on Weibo: "Taking the integer result of the 14th root of a 16-digit number is very simple; just memorize it. If he can calculate decimals, or if he can calculate the 3rd or 4th root, then I'll admit he has skill. The TV station found a bunch of liars there pretending to have superpowers."

Does Zhou Wei really possess extraordinary abilities?

Tests Show Extraordinary Mental Arithmetic Skills

Last week, accompanied by his mother, Zhou Wei came to Shanghai to undergo testing by experts from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and East China Normal University. Li Weidong, a researcher at the Bio-X Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, was one of the experts. After two days of testing, Li Weidong believed that Zhou Wei's mental arithmetic abilities were indeed beyond those of ordinary people and were not based on memorizing answers.

According to the expert group, they tested Zhou Wei with various types of mental arithmetic problems, including multi-digit multiplication, exponentiation, and root extraction. Calculations such as "calculating the 3rd or 4th root" proposed by Fang Zhouzi were also tested, and Zhou Wei was able to calculate them all. In addition to mental arithmetic tests, the expert group conducted memory tests on Zhou Wei and found that his memory was not beyond that of ordinary people. This indirectly proved that he was not answering questions by memorizing answers. "It should be said that Zhou Wei's mental arithmetic ability is not top-tier, but it is certainly far beyond that of ordinary people," said Li Weidong.

During the testing process, the expert group sometimes asked this "Rain Man" with moderate intellectual disability to write down his mental calculation process. What they saw was that Zhou Wei would decompose many numbers. For example, on an answer sheet with the problem "321×678," the calculation process he wrote was: "321÷3=107, 678÷6=113, 107×113×3×6=217638". Xu Zhenli, a special researcher in the Department of Mathematics and the Institute of Natural Sciences at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, stated that he did not understand Zhou Wei's decomposition of many numbers, because after decomposition, it still seemed difficult to calculate mentally, but Zhou Wei could derive the answer after decomposing.

May Belong to "Savant Syndrome"

Li Weidong believes that Zhou Wei likely belongs to "Savant Syndrome." Savant syndrome refers to individuals with cognitive impairments who, in one aspect, such as a particular art or academic field, possess abilities beyond those of ordinary people. Among autistic patients, 10% belong to savant syndrome.

The IQ of savant syndrome patients is mostly below 70 (previous tests showed: Zhou Wei's verbal IQ was 49, and performance IQ was below 46), but they far surpass ordinary people in some special tests, hence the colloquial term "idiot savant." Their talents take various forms, such as musical instrument performance, painting, memory, calculation, and calendar calculation abilities.

The protagonist in the American movie "Rain Man" is a typical savant syndrome patient, whose mental arithmetic and memory abilities left a deep impression on the audience. The prototype of "Rain Man" is the American Kim Peek. Born with macrocephaly leading to cerebellar damage and agenesis of the corpus callosum, the nerve bundles connecting the two brain hemispheres were completely lacking. This led to him not being able to walk until he was four years old, and as an adult, he could only walk sideways, with difficulties in other motor skills. His IQ was below average, but he possessed extraordinary memory: he could recite all the books he had read, needing only about 10 seconds per page when reading, and his mental arithmetic ability was astonishing.

Regarding the causes of "savant syndrome," Li Weidong told reporters that there is a scientific hypothesis: the language function center of humans is located in the left brain. When a person's left brain function is limited due to congenital or acquired reasons, their right brain may be more developed than ordinary people under some unknown conditions, thereby possessing "extraordinary abilities" in certain fields. Taking Zhou Wei as an example, due to being frightened in childhood or genetic and environmental factors, his brain development was significantly affected, resulting in language expression abilities at the level of a 3-4 year old child, but exceeding ordinary people in calculation ability.

Scientific Research Needs "Rain Man" Cases

Li Weidong stated: "Zhou Wei's case is very valuable for neuroscience research." Therefore, his team included Zhou Wei in the "China Super Brain Talent Pool." In October last year, the Bio-X Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in collaboration with famous scholars at home and abroad, began building the "China Super Brain Research Center" and the "China Super Brain Talent Pool," conducting in-depth interdisciplinary research on the genetic resource protection of talents in the pool and cognitive science, brain function science, behavioral science, psychology, neurobiology, genetics, and other fields.

Wang Guisong, director of the Shanghai Oriental Brain Science Institute and professor at Renji Hospital, pointed out that "idiot savants" like Zhou Wei are not very rare; Zhou Zhou, who is very talented in music, is also a typical case. After watching the TV program, he felt that the "Chinese Rain Man" was not a scam. According to Director Wang, both the US and EU governments have launched brain science plans aimed at exploring the working mechanisms of the human brain, drawing a complete map of brain activity, and developing therapies for incurable brain diseases. Shanghai researchers have also taken action, striving for breakthroughs in brain science and developing more potential of the human brain.