SUPER-HUMAN

 The Secret to Being Super-human: Brain Damage

Can you imagine being a master musician without any training? You are so good you could play a piece flawlessly after hearing it just once. What about being able to draw the landscape of a city from memory after seeing it just once? 

I think that is quite difficult for anyone to imagine. Are you familiar with the word AUTISTIC? What about the word SAVANT? You might have come across autistic a few times, but perhaps not savant. 

Autism is a developmental disorder, which develops during early childhood and is characterized especially by difficulties in forming and maintaining social relationships, by impairment of the ability to communicate verbally and non-verbally. It is also characterized by repetitive behavior patterns as well as restricted interests and activities. Individuals with this condition, are described as being autistic. Savant syndrome is a condition in which a person having a developmental disorder exhibits exceptional skill or brilliance in a limited field. Individuals with savant syndrome are described as savants. 

Only about 10% of autistic individuals have the savant syndrome and they are referred to as AUTISTIC-SAVANTS. However, this small portion, accounts for about 50% of individuals with savant syndrome. Savants who are not autistic, suffer some form of injury or defect in certain parts of their central nervous system. 

The savant syndrome is quite rare. However, it is not so rare as to have gone unnoticed over the years. Kim Peek , Leslie Lemke, Orlando Serrel, Stephen Wiltshire, Ellen Boudreaux and Daniel Tammet are a few of the highly notable savants history has recorded. 

Kim Peek was born with severe brain damage, his motor skills were impaired so much so that he struggled with simple tasks like buttoning a shirt. Kim Peek in his lifetime read over 10,000 books and remembered everything about them. He could also read 2 pages simultaneously, reading the right page with his right eye and the left page with his left eye. He could also do calendar calculation with ease: if he was told a date (any date), he could tell the exact day of the week it is.  Would it not be nice if we could all borrow Kim Peek’s “damaged brain” every now and then? 

Ellen Boudreaux is a blind autistic savant with extraordinary musical abilities. She can play music flawlessly after hearing it just once. Although Ellen Boudreaux is blind, she is able to move around without bumping into objects and she does this through echolocation. She peeps as she walks and as the sounds are reflected back, she can determine the position of objects. Ellen Boudreaux also has an “internal clock”. She can tell the exact hour and minute of the day at any point. 

Daniel Tammet, is an autistic savant with phenomenal mathematical and language expertise. Can you recite Pi up to 10 decimal places? Daniel Tammet first came into the limelight when he recited Pi up to 22,514 decimal places. Daniel Tammet claims that numbers are special to him. He sees integers up to 10,000 as having their own individual shape, colour, texture and feel. Daniel Tammet has since drawn what Pi looks like: a rolling landscape filled with distinct shapes and colours. Daniel Tammet also speaks about 11 languages including Icelandic (an extremely difficult language) which he learned within a week. 

A lot of research has gone into investigating this unique condition. However, the exact cause of savant syndrome has not been determined. It is still not clear why it is present in certain individuals and absent in others who are in similar conditions. Apart from the cause, there are other grey areas surrounding savant syndrome such as why it is more prevalent in males than in females by a ratio of 6:1. 

One notable fact however, is that the unique abilities of savants are not far reaching but are often limited to certain areas. They are often referred to as having an “island of genius”. While the examples of prodigious savants discussed here have more than one exceptional ability, most savants have a single phenomenal ability. 

Inasmuch as there is still so much to learn from this paradoxical condition, it is something worthy of celebration and hopefully, there will one day be a research breakthrough that allows us fully comprehend this condition and possibly explain how ordinary everyday people can also tap into and explore their own genius.