Interesting stuff…
Savant Syndrome is an exceedingly rare but remarkable condition in which persons with serious mental handicaps, resulting from various developmental disabilities, such as Autism or Williams Syndrome, or from major mental illness, have astonishing islands of ability or brilliance that stand in stark, markedly incongruous contrast to the overall disability. Some of these individuals are talented savants. These are individuals who display savant skills that are simply in contrast to the disability. In others, with a much rarer form of the condition, the ability or brilliance is not only spectacular in contrast to the disability, but would be spectacular even if viewed in a non-disabled person. These individuals are known as prodigious savants. The fewer than 100 cases of prodigious savants reported in the world literature in the past 100 years have shown remarkable similarities within an exceedingly narrow range of abilities, given the many possible skills in the human repertoire.
Traditionally the term “idiot savant” was used for individuals with serious mental handicaps and yet had special abilities. Historically the word “idiot” referred to those with an IQ of less than 25 while “savant” means one who is learned or wise. However, since most cases of idiot savant occur in individuals with an IQ of 40 or greater, the term “idiot” is a misnomer. In accordance with this, not to mention the negative nature of the term “idiot”, “savant syndrome” has begun to replace the older term. The condition can be congenital or be acquired by an otherwise normal individual following CNS injury or disease. It occurs in males more frequently than in females in an approximate ratio of 6:1. The skills can appear suddenly, without explanation, and can disappear just as suddenly.
Calendar Calculating
One of the most advanced cases of calendar calculating was based on research with identical twins George and Charlie, each with an IQ of 60. If given a date, they could give the day of the week over a span of 80,000 years. If asked to name in which years the next 200 Easters will fall on March 23, they would be able to name those years with lightning rapidity, faster than a computer and just as accurately. They could tell you what the weather was like on any day of their adult life, but they would have forgotten a name by the end of a brief visit. They could not count to 30 but they would swap 20-digit prime numbers for amusement.
Musical Ability
Thomas Wiggins, also known as “Blind Tom,” played Mozart works on the piano at age four, and could play back flawlessly any piece no matter the complexity. He could repeat a discourse of any length in any language without the loss of a syllable. Once tested with two compositions of 13 and 20 pages, he repeated them without error.
Cindy is another example of a musical savant. She is blind and moderately mentally retarded. She could play any song on the piano by ear after hearing it just one time. Musical selections were committed to memory. Her mechanical style was characteristic of most savants. All songs were played in the key of “C”; no sharps or flats were used.
Memorization
An example of this is the case of a male who had memorized an incredible number of statistics, including the population of every town in the United States in which the population exceeded 5,000 people; all United States’ county seats; the name, number of rooms, and location of approximately 2,000 well-established U. S. hotels; and the populations of 1,800 large foreign cities.
Calculating and Mathematical Skills
An example of a savant who demonstrated this ability is the case of a man who was blind. He could give the square root of any number running into four figures in an average of four seconds, and the cube root of any number running into six figures in six seconds. When he was asked how many grains of corn there would be in any one of sixty-four boxes, with one in the first, two in the second, four in the third, eight in the fourth and so on, he gave the answers for the fourteenth (8,192), for the eighteenth (131,072), and the twenty-fourth (8,388,608) instantaneously, and he gave the figures for the forty-eighth box (140,737,488,355,328) in six seconds. He also gave the total in all sixty-four boxes correctly in forty-five seconds.
Another example of a savant with these abilities is the case of a 27-year-old man with a mental age of three years. Conversation was possible only through the medium of mathematics. Multiplication of numbers with several digits, as well as calculation of squared numbers, and conversely, provision of square roots, was accomplished without paper. Interestingly, he could not perform simple arithmetic problems.
