/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:Standaardtabel; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”;} We are aware of our surroundings and of ourselves. Some brain structures are essential for consciousness, like the cerebral cortex and the thalamus, where the information from our senses is collected. After a stroke on the right side of the brain, both self-awareness and awareness of the surroundings may be partially impaired. The patient may not be aware of being paralysed on the left side and may ignore everything on the left, both in the surroundings and of his own body. This condition is known as “Neglect”.If you approach the patient’s bed from the left, you will not be seen, even though the patient can turn his head and could see you. If this patient reads a newspaper, he only looks at the right-hand pages, and he only draws the right-hand side of objects like a clock, a cat or a flower. Only the right-hand side of their dinner is eaten. If you turn the plate through 180 degrees, then they eat the other half.

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Daniel Tammet has Asperger syndrome, a form of autism coupled with high intelligence. He also has Savant syndrome which is generally characterised by excellence in one skill. Tammet has, however, unprecedented mathematical and language talents. In 2004 he set a record by faultlessly reciting from memory 22,514 decimal places of the number pi in five hours and nine minutes. He learned the series of numbers in just three months.Autistic people often think in images, an ability called synesthesia. Tammet has this ability too, for example he sees Wednesday, his birthday on January 31, 1979, as blue, and so the title of his book becomes clear: Born on a Blue Day.

For Tammet, letters and numbers have colours. He sees numbers not only in colour, but also in different forms and sizes: he can recognise every prime number up to 9,973 by its crystal form. When I spent a few days with him just before the publication of the Dutch translation of his book, Tammet told me proudly that he now also paints. “What are you painting?” I asked with interest. “The number pi,” he answered. He sees series of numbers, like the decimals of the number pi, as mountainous landscapes.

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Life has to meet a number of criteria such as mobility, metabolism, growth, independent reproduction (requiring information-carrying molecules like DNA or RNA), integration and regulation. Although the last two properties are also present in single-celled creatures, they reach the pinnacle of their development in the evolution of the nerve cell.

Separately, no single criterion specifies life. Flowing water moves, rusting iron metabolises, a crystal grows, and nowadays many young people decide that they can have a better life without reproduction. Integration and regulation can also be programmed in a computer. To define life, the combination of all these criteria must be present.

At the other end of the scale, doctors have been establishing death for centuries by the absence of a heartbeat and respiration, and by calculating that these functions will not return.

We have always been taught that nerve cells are extremely susceptible to a lack of oxygen: irreparable brain damage occurs after just four to five minutes without oxygen. This is true, but apparently it is not because nerve cells are so sensitive to a shortage of oxygen.

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