Autistic savant

An autistic savant (historically described as idiot savant) is a person with extraordinary mental abilities, often in numerical calculation, but sometimes in art or music. These skills are often associated with autism or mental retardation.

Abilities

A person with an extraordinary single mental skill but an otherwise unexceptional intellect, may be described simply as a savant, without qualifier, although savant is also frequently used figuratively to mean a person of learning, especially one of great knowledge in a particular subject, without regard to the person's overall intellect.

True savantism is a rare phenomenon which occurs in some autistic people and some people with certain developmental disorders. Some people have acquired savant-like abilities after suffering from head injuries. Autistic savantism is usually recognized during childhood and is often but not always found in autistic children. However it is also sometimes acquired in an accident or illness, typically one that impairs the left side of the brain. There is some research that suggests that it can be induced, which might support the view that unusual savant abilities are innate within all people but obscured by the normal functioning intellect.

Most autistic savants have very extensive mental abilities, called splinter skills. They can memorize facts, numbers, license plates, maps, and extensive lists of sports and weather statistics. Some savants can mentally note and then recall back perfectly a very long series of music, numbers, or speech. Some, known as mental calculators, can do lightning-fast arithmetic calculations, including finding prime factorizations.

Other autistic savant skills include:

• precisely estimating distances by sight
• calculating the day of the week for any given date over the span of tens of thousands of years
• perfect perception of passing time without a clock

Why autistic savants are capable of this sort of astonishing ability is not quite clear. Some savants have obvious neurological abnormalities, but the brains of most such individual savants are anatomically and physiologically normal; at least, there is no abnormality detectable by early 21st century science.

Examples of autistic savants include Blind Tom, who had exceptional musical ability although no musical education, and Richard Wawro, who is an exceptional autistic artist.

Famous autistic savants

• Tim Knab, a Russian artist in the 1830s, known for his cubism and accurate measurement of angles
• Blind Tom, blind and mentally handicapped pianist in 1860s US
• Jebediah Buxton, US savant calculator
• Alonzo Clemons, US wax sculptor
• Tony DeBlois, US blind and autistic musician
• Jonathan Lerman, US autistic artist
• Leslie Lemke, US blind musician with brain damage
• Vito Mangiamele, Sicilian savant calculator
• Thristan Mendoza, Filipino autistic marimba prodigy
• Gottfried Mind, Swiss autistic artist in the 18th century (B. 1768)
• Gerald Newport, American autistic and subject of the film Mozart and the Whale
• Hikari Oe, Japanese developmentally-delayed composer
• Derek Paravicini, US blind musician with learning disability
• Kim Peek, US savant with eidetic memory and model for Rain Man
• James Henry Pullen, British deaf-mute "Genius of Earlswood Asylum"
• Monty Pickren, US autistic clock maker
• Matt Savage, US autistic jazz prodigy
• Daniel Tammet, UK synaesthetic high-functioning autistic savant
• Gilles Trehin, French autistic artist and creator of the fictitious city of Urville
• Richard Wawro, Scottish autistic artist
• George Widener, US autistic savant, artist with calculator and calendar skills
• Stephen Wiltshire, British autistic artist
• Seth F. Henriett, Hungarian autistic savant with multiple autoimmune disorders, poet and writer

In movies and literature

• Rain Man starring Dustin Hoffman
• Funes, the Memorious: Short story by Jorge Luis Borges
• Being There starring Peter Sellers
• Mercury Rising starring Bruce Willis and Miko Hughes
• Forrest Gump, a novel by Winston Groom
• Cube starring Andrew Miller
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, a novel by Mark Haddon
• Norwegian Per Christian Ellefsen's movie Elling about a man of the same name, based on the book of the same name, by author Ingvar Ambjørnsen.
• In the book and film K-PAX it is suggested that a character is an autistic savant who can see the night sky from anywhere in the universe.
• Albino from Technopriests comics by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Zoran Janjetov
• The Mentats in Dune train their calculation skills to be on level with those of autistic savants.
• An Anthropologist on Mars by neurologist Oliver Sacks.
• Mozart and the Whale starring Josh Hartnett and Radha Mitchell.
• "Precogs" in Minority Report starring Tom Cruise
• Stroszek directed by Werner Herzog
• Denny Crane from Boston Law

See also

• Asperger's syndrome
• Autism
• List of fictional characters on the autistic spectrum
• List of autistic people
• People speculated to have been autistic

Further reading

• O'Connor N., Cowan R., & Samella K. (2000) Calendric Calculation and Intelligence. Intelligence 28, 31 ? 48.
• Pearce J.C. (1992) Evolution's end, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco.
• Snyder A.W. et al. (2003) Savant-like skills exposed in normal people by suppressing the left fronto-temporal lobe. J. Integrative Neuroscience 2, 149 ? 158.
• Snyder A.W. (2001) Paradox of the savant mind. Nature 413, 251 ? 252.
• Snyder A.W., & Michell D.J. (1999) Is integer arithmetic fundamental to mental processing?: the mind's secret arithmetic? Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B. 266, 587 ? 592.
• Treffert D.A. (2000) Extraordinary people, Bantom press, London.
• Treffert D.A. (1988) The Idiot Savant: A review of the Syndrome. Am. J. Psychiatry 145, 563 ? 572.

External links

• Purple Medical Blog: Autistic Savant: Two Seconds to Discover Prime Numbers Two Years To Learn to Ride the Bus
• Inducing savant-like abilities in ordinary humans by applying slow repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation to the left anterior temporal lobe.
• Wisconsin Medical Society: Savant Syndrome