Kim Peek learned to read at 16 months, at 18 he read and memorized the complete works of Shakespeare, and at the end of his life kept in memory the contents of 12 thousand books he had read. He is the prototype of the hero of the movie "Rain Man" with Dustin Hoffman, the most famous person with savant syndrome, a condition in which mental disorders are combined with extraordinary abilities.
What do we know about savants
Translated from French savant - "scientist", "skillful". The author of the term is believed to be John Langdon Down, who first described Down syndrome in the middle of the 19th century, but references to similar cases are found in the works of psychiatrist Benjamin Rush a century earlier.
Savants are people with mental disorders and the so-called "island of genius": phenomenal ability for arithmetic or music, fine arts, cartography, calendar calculations.
As a rule, such people are hardly able to serve themselves, but at the same time, some of them can recite several pages of a book they once read, or say what day of the week was October 1, 1967. Or, looking at the city from above, draw a detailed map of its streets from memory.
In most cases, savantism has a genetic nature, but there are cases of manifestation of the syndrome after traumatic brain injury, infectious and inflammatory processes in the brain or in violation of the development of the fetus in the womb. It is more common in men. One possible explanation is that the increased production of testosterone suppresses the development of the left hemisphere in favor of the right.
People with an “island of genius” are usually diagnosed with autism or Asperger's syndrome, abnormalities in mental and / or physical development, pathological changes in the brain, and a low level of general intelligence.
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Rain people
Due to the peculiarities of his memory, Kim Peak was called "kimputer", and this despite the fact that he had an IQ below normal, he learned to walk only at the age of four, and did not learn to button up buttons at all.
Kim Peek was born with a cerebral hernia, damage to the cerebellum (which explains motor problems), and without the corpus callosum, which connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain. There is a version that precisely because of the lack of a "bridge" between the hemispheres, the brain neurons created new connections, which led to an increase in the amount of memory.
The musician Leslie Lemke was born with even more serious vices. Because of the severe form of cerebral palsy, he learned to stand only at the age of 12, walk at 15, but this did not prevent him from learning to play the piano on his own at 16 and reproduce any melody he heard.
Another famous savant, British artist Stephen Wiltshire, spoke only at the age of five, and his first word was "paper." Stephen is famous for his exceptional ability to draw cityscapes from memory with a ballpoint pen.
An example of a savant who has acquired exceptional ability as a result of injury is Orlando Serrel. At the age of ten, he suffered a head injury while playing baseball, and since then has memorized every day in great detail.
Usually such people are endowed with one outstanding ability, much less often two. Three is an almost exceptional case. It is such a case - Ellen Bordeaux, a woman-savant, which in itself is not typical.
First, she is endowed with a musical gift: her brain is something like a library of all existing melodies. Secondly, being completely blind, she is able to perfectly navigate in space. Finally, Ellen has a “built-in internal clock” that allows her to tell the time to the minute.
In a sense, the abilities of savants can be compared to the superpower that comic book heroes are endowed with. Daniel Tammet, by the way, got the nickname Brainman, "the brain man". He is synesthetic: every number is tangible for him, he has a shape and color. Fame came to him in 2004 when he broke the European record by playing pi with 22,514 decimal places.
Diagnosed with autism, Daniel was diagnosed as a child, but his outstanding abilities began to appear when the boy suffered a severe attack of epilepsy. Outwardly, the young man is not much different from those around him, but communication is difficult for him.
However, unlike most other savants, Daniel is able to talk about how he sees the world and what it is like to live at the intersection of genius and madness.