I’ve read about people who can, with seeming effortlessness, read and regurgitate books verbatim, play musical instruments well with no prior training, know the day of the week for any particular date, produce startling accurate drawings or models of complicated 3 dimensional objects after briefly seeing them, etc.
How do these people process information so efficiently? It doesn’t appear to be a learned skill but yet it must be because I haven’t heard of a child possessing the abilities I mentioned, only adults. Knowledge and skill do not just ‘appear’ in any individual. I’m totally astounded by their almost superhuman mental and artistic abilities. Are the majority of savants autistic and what is the ratio of males to females?
Just this semester I took a high-level course in the sociology of the mind and the brain, and we addressed this very topic. The problem with understanding it is that most people assume that, given a savant, something about their brain causes their abilities, rather than the other way around.
The real answer is that, just like any ability acquired by any human being, continued exposure and thousands of hours of practice rewire our neural connections so that we become better at whatever it is. What makes savants different is that they practice their skill almost constantly, to the exclusion of learning basic social norms. Some of them can’t even feed themselves. So they become insanely good at mental arithmetic or remembering license plates or naming the day of the week for any given date, and meanwhile they lack the social graces the rest of us have been learning. Sometimes this lack of social skills becomes a problem in its own right, namely autism.
Cite: Michael J.A. Howe, Genius Explained, especially chapter 5.
Actually it is observed frequently in children, hence the term “child prodigy.” As I understand it, many of the people who display these abilities begin to exhibit them during their childhood years.
I had read that it was because their brain filters out almost all other external stimuli. This allows it to focus on the task at hand to a much higher degree.
But I think I like Spatial Rift 47’s explanation better.
There was a documentary on British television earlier this year following a savant. He, however, was atypical, as he led a perfectly normal life although he was capable of performing impressive sums in his head and remembering game states in chess. He went to America to be tested by doctors and, IIRC, he was genuine.
Whatever causes it, the brain blocking all other stimuli out isn’t what was causing this guys abilities.
Spatial Rift 47 is right. One of the cases we learned about was someone who could give you the day of the week for any particular date. What ususally isn’t mentioned is that he would spend most of his day playing with a day/date chart. It’s not surprising that after doing this for 16 hours a day he’d figure out the relationship.
Do -anything- for 16 hours a day and you’ll get pretty darn good at it.
During a search I came across an interesting website called Savant Academy which apparently fosters young savant’s musical and artistic abilities. Savant’s amazing abilities do present at an early age albeit in a more primitive form.
On the site there is a video link to an NBC story about a 15 year old blind mentally handicapped girl who can play the piano and has a repertoire of hundreds of melodies. She has also composed many original pieces, yet the girl barely communicates and cannot tie her own shoelaces. It’s fascinating stuff.
It is this month’s Scientific American. I bought it yesterday. The article is incredible and the OP really should get it.
The Savant in the article is missing whole structures in his brain including the Corpus Callosum that usually connect the two brain hemispheres. His appear to be fused.
The guy in the article reads books at 8 - 10 seconds a page and has total recall of everything even months or years later. He knows every zip code and area code in the U.S. and can instantly cross-reference them with TV and radio stations that cover them. He has memorized 9000 books so far.
As to why, the article addresses some possible theories but the reality is that no one really knows. Any detailed theory is just conjecture at this point. The high level workings of the brain are understood much more poorly that most people think.
That is just a poor theory all around but I guess that’s how sociologists are conditioned to respond. Some savants have brain structure differences like the Kim Peek who I just described.
“He had an enlarged head, with an encephalocele, according to his doctors. An MRI shows, again according to his doctors, an absent corpus callosum — the connecting tissue between the left and right hemispheres; no anterior commissure and damage to the cerebellum. Only a thin layer of skull covers the area of the previous encephalocele.”
That were brain abnormalities that were present at birth. No amount of socialization can cause whole brain structures to simply disappear. The man has abilities that are completely out side of normal human skills. He doesn’t do the party trick type things like naming the day of the week. His is total memory and instantaneous recall. Likewise, there are some savants that can play back complicated musical pieces note for note after just one listen. That ability falls outside of the range of behavior that normal humans can ever learn even if they are trained musicians.
You’ve got that right. I was once in a PhD program in behavioral neuroscience. I always have to point out to people how very little we know about how the brain works at even the most basic level. We just don’t understand how that giant neural network works at as a whole, in parts, how those parts communicate, or anything else. There are some rough findings in all areas and progress continues but the understanding is shockingly low.
Popular press tends to make people presume that someone actually understands this stuff when they don’t. Some people get taken when they hear something like “he is missing the Corpus Callosum”. They mistake that for an answer when it is actually only a clue in a big mystery that is far from being solved.
I think it should be pointed out that “child prodigy” and “idiot savant” aren’t at all the same.
Jehudi Menuhin was a child prodigy having performed at Carnegie Hall at the age of 7 years or thereabouts. As far as I know he was a reasonably well rounded individual.
Violinist Fritz Kreisler and pianist Artur Rubenstein attended the Menuhin Carnegie Hall concert.
As they listened to the beautiful music coming out of the small figure on the stage Kreisler leaned over and said to Rubenstein, “Awfully warm in here tonight, isn’t it?”
If you think about it, almost any work the brain does is pretty amazing; even the process of standing still requires constant adjustments of dynamic balance; walking is incredibly complex; running is just pretty much miraculous.
Part of the problem with conceptualising all of this is that we fall into the trap of thinking of the brain as a computer; it is a computer, but not like the one on which you’re reading this - for a digital computer, motor control is inherently and necessarily quantified; you can’t just say that you want something to move, you have to say how much and how fast; the human brain does this by means of processes that go through ‘fuzzy logic’ and out the other side - it doesn’t matter by what distance your foot clears the ground in mid stride, so much as it matters that it does actually happen - of course the system needs to home in on efficiencies within that process, but it does that by reinforced trial and error, rather than prior analysis.
Cognitive processes aren’t necessarily the same, of course; I just wanted to emphasise the point that even when you’re just standing still, your brain is already performing an incredible feat.
I recall reading somewhere the Einstein’s brain had slightly larger parietal lobes due to an increased number and density of glial cells (apparantly, they assist the axons). I think it was suggested that he had a physical difference that was enhanced by use. I think there may have been a difference in his corpus colossum, too, if I recall correctly.
I’m curious about these kinds of differences because on my son’s autism dx and because I occasionally work with a guy with a near eidetic (or “photographic”) memory. I enjoy talking to that guy as it’s kind of like having my own personal friendly encyclopedia.
My son (8 y.o.) has a better than average memory. He’s not a savant or anything like that, but it is interesting to see that he does seem to think differently than others at times.
You’re absolutely correct about this. From everything I’ve read about the study of the brain, it is like the study of cosmology. The more that is learned, the more they find they don’t know. Sort of losing ground all the time.
