They Mentally Calculated Faster Than a Brain Could Ever Do

The credibility of claims that mathematical calculation comes from brains is inversely proportional to the speed and capacity and reliability at which humans can mentally calculate. There are numerous signal slowing factors in the brain, such as the relatively slow speed of dendrites, and the cumulative effect of synaptic delays in which signals have to travel over many relatively slow chemical synapses (by far the most common type of synapse in the brain). As explained in my post here, such physical factors should cause brain signals to move at a typical speed very many times slower than the often cited figure of 100 meters per second: a sluggish "snail's pace" speed of only about a centimeter per second (about half an inch per second).  Ordinary everyday evidence of very fast and accurate mental math calculation in humans is therefore evidence against claims that unaided human math calculation occurs because of brain activity, particularly because the brain is totally lacking in the things humans add to constructed objects to allow fast recall (things such as sorting and addressing and indexes). Chemical synapses in the brain do not even reliably transmit signals. Scientific papers say that each time a signal is transmitted across a chemical synapse, it is transmitted with a reliability of 50% or less.  (A paper states, "Several recent studies have documented the unreliability of central nervous system synapses: typically, a postsynaptic response is produced less than half of the time when a presynaptic nerve impulse arrives at a synapse." Another scientific paper says, "In the cortex, individual synapses seem to be extremely unreliable: the probability of transmitter release in response to a single action potential can be as low as 0.1 or lower.")  The brain has nothing like the CPU or software in a computer that allows it to calculate. It has been pointed out that the brain seems to lack any feature by which it could even store a number. The more evidence we have of very fast and very accurate calculation occurring by humans unaided by any devices or even a pencil and paper,  the stronger is the evidence against the claim that human math calculation occurs from brain activity. 

It is therefore very important to collect and study all cases of exceptional mental mathematics performance. The more such cases we find, and the more dramatic such cases are, the stronger is the case against the claim that unaided human math calculation is a neural phenomenon. Or to put it another way, the credibility of claims that math calculation is a brain phenomenon is inversely proportional to the speed and reliability and difficulty of the best cases of human mental math  performance.  The more cases that can be found of humans that seem to calculate too quickly and too accurately for a noisy address-free brain to do ever do,  the stronger is the case that human thinking is not a neural phenomenon but instead a spiritual or psychic or metaphysical phenomenon. 

Some cases of exceptional math performance can be found in the performance records of the Mental Calculation World Cup held every two years in Germany.  Below are some of the results recorded on the page here (the Wikipedia page for Mental Calculation World Cup):

2004:

"Multiplying two 8-digit numbers, 10 tasks in 15 minutes. Winner: Alberto Coto (Spain), 8 correct results."

2008:

"Multiplying two 8-digit numbers, 10 tasks in 15 minutes

Winner: Alberto Coto (Spain), 10 correct results in 8:25 minutes, world record."

2010:

"Adding ten 10-digit numbers, 10 tasks in 10 minutes

Winner: Alberto Coto (Spain), 10 correct results in 3:42 minutes, world record

Multiplying two 8-digit numbers, 10 tasks in 15 minutes

Winner: Marc Jornet Sanz (Spain), 10 correct results in 4:56 minutes, world record."

Calendar Calculations, dates from the years 1600–2100, one minute

Winner: Yusnier Viera (Cuba), 48 correct results, world cup record."

Viera's feat presumably required naming the correct days of the week for 48 random dates between 1600 and 2100.  Doing such a feat withing one minute is one of the most astonishing demonstrations of human mental speed ever produced.  I have read many times about the ability of some rare savants to name the days of the week given a random date from the past. But I have never heard before about an ability to perform such a feat so many times (48) in a single minute. The feat of Sanz involved multiplying together 8-digit numbers correctly in his mind at a rate of about 30 seconds per calculation, a blazing speed of calculation. 

2012:

"Adding ten 10-digit numbers, 10 tasks in 7 minutes

Winner: Naofumi Ogasawara (Japan); 10 correct results in 191 seconds, world record.

Multiplying two 8-digit numbers, 10 tasks in 10 minutes

Winner: Freddis Reyes Hernández (Cuba), 10 correct results in 361 seconds.

Calendar Calculations, One minute, random dates from the years 1600–2100

Winner: Myagmarsuren Tuuruul (Mongolia), 57 correct results, world cup record."

The feat of Hernandez involved multiplying together 8-digit numbers correctly in his mind at a rate of about 36 seconds per calculation, a blazing speed of calculation. Tuuruul 's feat presumably required naming within a single minute the correct days of the week for 57 random dates between 1600 and 2100, a feat even more impressive than Viera's feat mentioned above. 

2016:

"Calendar Calculations, one minute, random dates from the years 1600–2100

Winner: Georgi Georgiev (Bulgaria), 66 correct results, world cup record."

Georgiev's feat presumably required naming within a single minute the correct days of the week for 66 random dates between 1600 and 2100, a feat even more impressive than the other calendar calculation feats mentioned above.  That's a speed so fast it is basically instantaneous, as merely stating the days (without calculating them) would take almost as much time. 

2018:

"Calendar Calculations, one minute, random dates from the years 1600–2100

Winner: Marc Jornet Sanz [it] (Spain), 71 correct results, world cup record."

 That's a speed so fast it is basically instantaneous, as merely stating the days (without calculating them) would take almost as much time. 

2020-2022:

"Multiplying two 8-digit numbers, 10 minutes

Winner: Aaryan Nitin Shukla (India), 21 points (23 correct, 2 incorrect results), world cup record.

Calendar Calculations, one minute, random dates from the years 1600–2100

Winner: Akshita Shah (India), 80 correct results, world cup record."

Again, the calendar calculation is so fast it is basically instantaneous, as merely stating the days of the weeks (without calculating them) would take almost as much time. The feat of Shukla involved multiplying together 8-digit numbers correctly in his mind at a rate of one correct answer about every 26 seconds per calculation, a blazing speed of calculation.

2024:

"Multiplying two 8-digit numbers, 10 minutes.

Winner: Aaryan Nitin Shukla (India), 25 points (28 correct, 3 incorrect), world cup record.

Calendar Calculations, one minute, random dates from the years 1600–2100.

Winner: Aaryan Nitin Shukla (India), 100 correct results (out of 100 dates given), world cup record."

We have here two types of blazing fast calculation by the same person, Aaryan Nitin Shukla. Again, the calendar calculation is so fast it is basically instantaneous, as merely stating the days of the weeks (without calculating them) would take almost as much time. The feat of Shukla involved multiplying together 8-digit numbers correctly in his mind at a rate of one correct answer about every 21 seconds per calculation, a blazing speed of calculation.

Below are visuals showing an 1812 account of the blazing-fast math powers of Zerah Colburn, witnessed at a time when the boy was only twelve. 

Postscript: A document entitled "How Much Computational Power Does It Take to Match the Human Brain?" is written by someone making naive and erroneous assumptions that the brain produces all mental effects, and that we should look at the brain to try to calculate how much computing power you would need to duplicate human mentality. But at one point in the document we have an interesting passage that conflicts with such assumptions. We read this:

"Two experts (one physicist, one neuroscientist) mentioned the evolutionary history of neurons as a reason to think that they don’t implement extremely complex computations. The basic thought here seemed to be something like: (a) neurons early in evolutionary history seem likely to have been doing something very simple (e.g., basic stimulus-response behavior), (b) we should expect evolution to tweak and recombine these relatively simple components, rather than to add a lot of complex computation internal to the cells, and (c) indeed, neurons in the human brain don’t seem that different from neurons in very simple organisms.239 I haven’t looked into this, but it seems like an interesting angle.24"