Savant syndrome is an exceptional condition in which people with severe mental disabilities, specially autistic disorder, shows
Kim Peek - One of the most popular savants
whose skill is remember everything he reads
island of geniusdespite the overall disability. Savant syndrome can be congenital where the skills appear early in childhood, and can also be acquired from sudden accidents such as stroke, brain injury, or dementia. Approximately one in ten autistics are savants, those with mental retardation or severe brain injuries may accomplish savantry, but this regularly occurs less than 1% of the time.
Kim Peek - One of the most popular savants
whose skill is remember everything he reads
Savant (French for "knowing", from the French savoir "to know", English since the 18th century)
Here are some extraordinary savant skills:
- Read books and remember everything that is written.
- Perform complex calendar calculations
- Learn a language in a week
- Memorize vast amount of information
- Play piano piece by just hearing once
- Draw accurate and detailed by just seeing once
- Solve mathematical problems inside their heads
- Measure dimensions without using tools
- Human echo location
- and more amazing skills..
How do they do it?
Savant syndrome still doesn't have particular cause but there are numerous theories that may help explain what causes this mysterious phenomenon. Here are some of the theories:- Eidetic Image - The Eidetic Image has been identified in psychological literature as a vision, as a source for new thought and feeling, as a material picture in the mind which can be scanned by the person as he would scan a real current event in his environment, and as a potent, highly significant stimulus which arises from within the mind and throws it into a series of self-revealing imagery effects.
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Concrete Thinking and Inability To Think Abstractly -
It is hypothesized that savants have an advantage of accessing the less processed information within our brains before we automatically attempt to perceive the concepts into meaningful labels. As most savants are autistic, individuals with autism have a failure of top-down inhibition. Therefore, they have a privileged entry to information that is blocked out by our perceptions or logic, this could help explain their instinctive logic.
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Inherited Skills - This theory assumes that a genetic component is essential for a particular skill to evolve. As any other disease is inherited, it is possible for heredity to play a part in savantry. There has been a linkage found between savant syndrome and specific chromosome:
15q11-q13
. The chromosome may be accountable for a certain cognitive style of the individual, but it still does not explain how the skill is fully attributed and developed.
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Left Hemisphere Damage -Some theories show a correlation between this condition and pre-natal, peri-natal or even post natal damage to the left hemisphere damage. By harming the left hemisphere, which is well known for logic, the right brain dominates and brings out the intuitive characteristics in the individual.