Savants

The brain has always been one of the areas of the human body that has fascinated me the most, Savants especially. If you did not know a Savant is, it is a person who has developmental disorders and have one or more areas of expertise, ability or brilliance that are in contrast with the individual's overall limitations. These areas of expertise range from math to art. If you have ever seen the movie Rain Man, the character played by Dustin Hoffman is an example of a individual with savant skills.

However people with these amazing abilities are few and far between. Here are some statistics.

•10% of people on the autistic spectrum have savant skills
•Less than 1% of persons with other developmental disabilities have savant skills
•50% of savants are autistic; the other 50% have different disabilities, mental retardation, brain injury or a brain disease
•Male savants outnumber female savants by four to six times.

There is an exception that proves the rule. Daniel Tammet is a savant who only has a mild form of autism who is able to speak about and explain what his thinking process are like. Daniel's speciality is with numbers. He recently set the European record for the number of digits of pi he recited from memory, wich ended up totaling at 22,514 digets. He explains that for every number he can see a corresponding shade in his head. So when he makes a calculation or recites digets of pi, he is looking at picture in his head. I find this incredibly amazing -- because its something I wish I could do.



http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126881.800-inside-the-mind-of-an-autistic-savant.html