What is a Savant? Why are they Physically and Mentally Challenged?
By definition, a Savant is regarded as someone who has remarkable brilliance in one area of their life, despite having other emotional and physical limitations such as autism. Medically speaking, Savantism is not recognized by the medical authorities, and is instead seen as a psychological and developmental issue.
About half of all people described as Savants have autism, while the other half have developmental disorders including brain injury, retardation and other types of brain diseases which affect development. It is important to note that being autistic does not mean you have Savantism, but rather the two seem to have a link (unproven medically).
Savants are notably slow in many areas of their lives, but display brilliance in a select area such as mathematics. They tend to have a ‘super memory’ which is seen as narrow because they find it hard to put information to use practically, even though their recall ability is second to none.
As a general rule, Savant males outnumber female Savants 6:1 and 10% of autistic people show Savant abilities. The skills that Savants have verge on genius and even surpass the skills of ‘normal’ people. Examples of skills that savants have include a photographic memory, exceptional mathematical ability, musical genius, speed reading, art and prolific writing ability.
What is characteristic of all of these Savants is their mesmerizing ability to outperform average or skilled people in their chosen ability. For example, some mathematical Savants are able to complete complex and lengthy calculations at an unbelievable speed with no calculator.
The first recorded Savant was Thomas Fuller, who despite being severely mentally handicapped was able to perform a lengthy and complicated calculation concerning time in about 90 seconds. He even made a correction in his own reasoning. Despite his amazing gift, Fuller was unable to comprehend virtually anything.
Some Savants display what is known as Calendar memory where they are able to tell you the day of a particular date for any given year – and often within seconds. The cause of Savantism is not fully known, although it is speculated that it is caused by injury to the left brain and that the right brain compensates for it. This theory is further backed by individuals displaying Savant abilities after they have received an injury to the left side of their brain.
The left brain theory of Savantism has been researched and tested by using healthy volunteers to have parts of their left brain temporarily immobilized in a procedure known as Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. The findings only showed some improvement in Savant type abilities, but nothing that was considered close to genius. In fact, some participants experienced some short term memory loss. The findings suggest that the damage to the left brain would have to be considerable to evoke Savantism.
Whatever the cause of Savantism, it is clear that the subject area arouses much interest and fascination in scientists and researchers alike.
