Genius? Anyone?

Came across a documentary called "Fragments of a Genius" on cable tv. Interesting how they (the geniuses) are called "Idiot Savant" - they are actually people who are autistic but possess one or more remarkable "gifts" from God.

Scientifically, it was said that only the part of their brain that controls logical thinking are impaired in some ways and the impairment actually enable other parts of the brain to process other kind information in enormous chunks that is not possible with ordinary people. Furthermore, the lost of logical thinking led them to "Think" in a creative and yet unexplainable ways that baffled scientists.

The "Savants" featured are:
Derek Paravicini, who has a keen ear for music - being able to play a tune after hearing it for the first time; able to repeat 10 piano notes (max numbers of fingers one has) concurrently; able to use the piano to duplicate the music from an orchestra of 50-60 instruments - all after hearing it for the first time. Even the music scholars are amazed at his ability.

Stephen Wiltshire, who has a photographic memory of architectural structures (like geometrical shapes) and able to sketch them in details after seeing them for the first time, right to the details of the number of columns, windows or steps. Yet he has problems with counting and simple additions. As I had found out from YouTube, he has been painting city landscapes all over the world after only having taken a helicopter rides in each of these cities once.

Another one is a "dates" genius (cannot recall the name) who can tell you the day, of a certain date and year exactly, and faster than one were to key into a computer program to calculate. Ironically, he is not able to do simple additions.

Having tickled my curiosity, I found another savant in YouTube, Kim Peek. He was the man that was modeled after in the show "Rain Man" by Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. He has the remarkable ability to remember almost everything (98%) he read from a book. He speed reads as well, taking about 10 sec to read a page which ordinary person may take about 3 minutes to complete. His father said that he is also able to use each of his eyes to read both sides of the opened book concurrently. He is permanently stationed in Salt Lake City Public Library which houses more than 10 thousand books; which should keep him busy for a while.

All these savants are showing clear signs of autism. As one of the least autistic savant, Daniel Tammet explained, "He remember numbers as a series of colours and patterns". He has the astonishing ability to recite the numerical notation of the Mathematical PIE (3.14159...) up to 22 thousand digits (and it took him about 5 hours to recite it). On top of this, he managed to learn the Icelandic language in 1 week (the locals said it is the most difficult language to learn on earth) - and he had to be interviewed on the local television in that newly-learnt language after the 1 week period. He seems to be one of the rare savants to possess more than one unusual "skills". Accordingly to Daniel in one of the YouTube clips, there are only about 25 savants in the world.

In another YouTube clip, I found that in Japan, there are schools that are teaching students to use the abacus and further development will lead them to learn speed-calculations. Maybe there are ways to train a genius?

Is there a "genius" in you? I think we do to a certain extent. Sometimes, it is whether we are able to discover our strengths and further develop them to put them into good uses.

Something for you to think about: as Kim Peek said, "You do not have to be handicapped to be different, everyone is different".

Note: All these YouTube clips can be found with the names of the savant mentioned above.