Everyone has heard that some of us are telepathic or clairvoyant, but no one can prove that the abilities of these people really exist. Meanwhile, a person may actually have "superpowers" that seem unusual to us, but are directly caused by some peculiarities of the brain or physiology. Let's talk about them.
Absolute memory
There are people who remember with absolute accuracy everything they have ever seen or heard. For example, the Japanese woman Akira Kharaguchi could name the first 100 thousand digits of pi from memory … Russian journalist Shereshevsky easily memorized rows or tables of 50, 100 or more numbers, easily kept in his memory long rows of words, including in foreign languages, and even meaningless syllables …
And one American woman, nicknamed the Calendar Woman, is able to recall any date of her life since 1974, name the exact day of the week and describe in detail what events happened to her then.
Autistic people often have absolute memory. So, the hero of the film "Rain Man" Raymond Babbitt was able to read the contents of about 12 thousand books by heart.
Perfect pitch
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As soon as such a person hears a sound, he can reproduce it absolutely accurately. Experts believe that such people first classify sounds and remember them by categories, and then determine which category this sound belongs to. They identify frequencies. This allows them to easily sing any note or chords of a song that they have only heard once.
Extended light perception
Ordinary people recognize light only in the red, green and blue ranges of the light spectrum. In addition, in each of these ranges, we are able to distinguish about 100 shades. People with extended light perception also see in the ultraviolet range, which allows them to perceive up to 100 million colors. According to experts, this is more typical of women than men. Interestingly, color blindness, which is more common in men, may have been inherited from a woman with enhanced light perception.
Echolocation
It is well known that this ability is developed in bats. They emit sound and then echo the object's location. Such a gift is sometimes found in people. Especially often with the blind, since it is for them that it is very important to orientate in space without the aid of sight.
Super taste
These people are very sensitive to all the shades of taste of what has got into their mouth. The fact is that they have a mushroom-shaped growth on their tongue from birth, on which there are additional taste buds. As a result, the reaction to taste is more pronounced than that of others. Such people often choose the profession of a taster.
Super bath
They distinguish the slightest odors and their shades, even where ordinary people do not feel anything. An example is the hero of Patrick Suskind's novel "The Perfume". Yes, it is not easy for such people to live, as they can constantly suffer from the bad smells surrounding them. But on the other hand, they are able to enjoy an inaccessible bouquet of the most exquisite aromas … They are perfectly suited to the profession of a perfumer or a perfume taster.
Genetic chimerism
The name of this phenomenon was given by Homer, who described in the Iliad a creature whose body parts belong to various animals, a chimera. Chimerism is also scientifically called tetragametism. It happens that two fertilized eggs or embryos in the early stages of pregnancy fuse and as a result, a person carries two sets of genes, rather than one. Sometimes this is reflected in the appearance and physical condition of a person, and sometimes it is revealed only during DNA analysis.
There are about a hundred such cases described in the medical literature. It is assumed that chimerism in humans is a consequence of taking fertility drugs.
For example, one woman's head parameters were markedly different from body parameters. When she was supposed to have a kidney transplant, it turned out that none of her sons could be a donor, since she … is not their mother. Research has shown that a woman's ovaries have two genomes.
All these things at first glance seem to be incredible miracles. But each of these "miracles" has a very clear scientific explanation, and most of them are genetic in nature.